From Shop Floor to Boardroom: The Historical Evolution of Australian Management Consulting, 1940s to 1980s.

Business History, January, 2000 by WRIGHT, CHRISTOPHER

This article traces the historical development of management consulting in Australia. While some observers have argued the origins of management consulting involved primarily executive and board-level advice over corporate strategy and structure, as was the case in the United Kingdom, Australian management consulting began with a dominantly Taylorist focus on shop-floor productivity before diversifying into the broader range of general management services. It is argued that while economic and technological changes have played a role in such diversification, of equal importance has been the ability of consultancies to reinvent themselves and create demand amongst client organisations for an ever increasing range of services. The article concludes by arguing that modem...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

Premium Content Partnership | HighBeam Research provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works.