| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The World's Newest Profession: Management Consulting in the Twentieth Century. By Christopher D. McKenna. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. xxii, 370 pp. $30.00, ISBN 978-0-521-81039-5.)
Christopher D. McKenna's masterful, impeccably researched, prize-winning study of management consulting exemplifies the best that business history has to offer to the larger historical profession, the business community, and those who shape public policy. The World's Newest Profession ably analyzes the role of public policy in creating one of the most consistently mocked and reviled segments of the managerial community. Consultants are often pilloried in the press, with stories emphasizing their divided loyalties, their propensity to exploit conflicts of interest, and their ability to outsource ethically and legally questionable components of corporate policy.	1
Ironically, public concern regarding ethical lapses and conflicts of interest created the profession of management consulting. With the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, New Dealers reduced the threat of collusion by prohibiting banks from participating in the financial reorganization of businesses. Subsequent antitrust rulings cited conflict-of-interest issues in preventing large corporations, such as International Business Machines (IBM), from offering consulting services. In requiring corporations to outsource critical elements of knowledge transmission, the state thus created an incentive for cost accountants to become management consultants.	. . .

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