There is a comparatively indecipherable line between management consulting & more consulting practices, like IT consulting.

History
Management consulting grew by using a rise of management as a unique field of study. A 1st management consulting hard was Arthur D. Little, founded in the late 1890s by the MIT professor of the same name. Though Arthur D. Little late became the general management consultancy, it originally specialized inside technical indicator search. A number 1 pure management & strategy consulting company was McKinsey & Company, still considered a leader in the field. McKinsey was founded around Chicago during 1926 by James O. McKinsey, but the modern McKinsey was shaped by Marvin Bower, who believed that management consultancies should adhere to the same high professional standards as lawyers and doctors. Andrew T. Kearney, an original McKinsey partner broke off & started A.T. Kearney in 1937.

Fallowing Globe War II, the total of newly management consulting firms formed, virtually all notably Boston Consulting Group, founded in 1963, which brought the vigorous analytical approach to the learn of management & strategy. Function done at McKinsey, BCG, & Harvard Business School during a Sixties & 70s developed a information & approaches that would define the recently field of strategic management, setting the groundwork for numerous consulting firms to watch. Too important was a development of consulting arms by each accounting house (like Arthur Andersen) and spherical IT services corporations (like IBM).

Current state of the industry
Management consulting has grown chop-chop, using rate of growth of the industry exceeding 20% in the Eighties & Nineties. As a business service, consulting remains extremely cyclic & joined to overall economic conditions. A consulting industry shrank in a time of the 2001-2003 period, however got been getting slowly increasing incubation since. Inside 2004, revenues were higher 3% across the last month, giving a market size of good under $125 billion [http://www.consultingcentral.com/].

Presently, there are ternary independent types of consulting firms. Number one, there are big, diversified organizations, like IBM's Global Services & Deloitte Consulting offer the range of services, including IT consulting, additionally to a management consulting practice. 2nd come a big management & strategical consulting specialists, rather a venerable McKinsey, that offer strictly management consulting, however are not specialised in any of these industry. Eventually, there are dress shop house, typically quite microscopic, that keep around super focused areas of consulting expertness, like [http://canback-dangel.com Canback Dangel] within prognostic analytics or even [http://fmcg.com First Manhattan] in banking.

Approaches
Management consulting has turn into the primary source for innovation around the practice of management, forming a bridge between academe, business firm, & thought leaders in more fields. Following, management consulting firms apply the kind of information & techniques to approach business problems. View strategic management for more info.

Criticism
Management consultants are often criticized for overutilization of buzzwords, reliance on management fads and a failure to have practicable plans that may be followed across. a total of extremely critical books just about management consulting argue that a mismatch between management consulting advice & a ability of corporate executive to actually produce the vary suggested effects within material restitution to existent businesses, look at, e.g. Dangerous Company by James O'Shea.

Non amazingly, management consulting is too a butt of several business-related jokes, such as: "Question: What’s the difference between a management consultant and a used-car salesman. Answer: A used car salesman knows when he is lying."

Leading firms