Dr Christopher McKenna
I am currently University Reader in Business History and Strategy at the Said Business School, a Fellow of Brasenose College, and Co-Director of the Global History of Capitalism Project in the Oxford Centre for Global History within the History Faculty. I am particularly interested in the historical development and strategy of professional firms, and their role in shaping global business over the last two centuries. My current book project is a global history of white-collar crime from the South Sea Bubble to the present, tentatively titled Partners in Crime. In my teaching, I am piloting a series of historical business case studies, linked to the material culture of global trade, to be distributed freely online. Before coming to Oxford, I did my undergraduate degree in economics at Amherst College, my doctorate in History at Johns Hopkins, and I have held research fellowships at Yale, Georgetown, and Harvard.
Christopher D. McKenna, The World's Newest Profession: Management Consulting in the Twentieth Century (CUP, 2006)
In The World's Newest Profession Christopher McKenna offers a history of management consulting in the twentieth century. Although management consulting may not yet be a recognized profession, the leading consulting firms have been advising and reshaping the largest organizations in the world since the 1920s. This groundbreaking study details how the elite consulting firms, including McKinsey & Company and Booz Allen & Hamilton, expanded after US regulatory changes during the 1930s, how they changed giant corporations, nonprofits, and the state during the 1950s, and why consultants became so influential in the global economy after 1960. As they grew in number, consultants would introduce organizations to 'corporate culture' and 'decentralization' but they faced vilification for their role in the Enron crisis and for legitimating corporate blunders. Through detailed case studies based on unprecedented access to internal files and personal interviews, The World's Newest Profession explores how management consultants came to be so influential within our culture and explains exactly what consultants really do in the global economy.
