Enterprise and Society Advance Access originally published online on February 2, 2007
Enterprise and Society 2007 8(1):180-182; doi:10.1093/es/khl074
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Copyright © The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference.
Christopher McKenna. The World's Newest Profession: Management Consulting in the Twentieth Century
Christopher McKenna. The World's Newest Profession: Management Consulting in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2006. xxi + 370 pp. ISBN 0-521-81039-6, $30.00 (cloth)
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In this engrossing study of management consulting, Christopher McKenna seeks to understand the prominence of consulting within American business. Focusing on a small set of elite consulting firms, but frequently discussing others, McKenna argues that the legitimacy and knowledge sold by consultants to their clients were rooted in the growing complexity and internationalization of the American economy (the forces conventionally invoked to explain consulting's rise), as well as changes in federal regulations in the 1930s, 1950s, and 1980s.