It ranks
among the unquestioned laws of American big business over the last half
century: If you want to be taken seriously, you hire McKinsey & Company.
FOUNDED IN
1926, McKINSEY CAN LAY CLAIM to the following partial list of accomplishments:
its consultants have ushered in waves of structural, financial, and
technological change to the nation’s best organizations; they remapped the
power structure within the White House; they even revolutionized business
schools. In this book, star financial journalist Duff McDonald shows just how,
in becoming an indispensable part of decision making at the highest levels,
McKinsey has done nothing less than set the course of American capitalism.
But he
also answers the question that’s on the mind of anyone who has ever heard the
word McKinsey: Are they worth it? After all, just as McKinsey can be shown to
have helped invent most of the tools of modern management, the company was also
involved with a number of striking failures. Its consultants were on the scene
when General Motors drove itself into the ground, and they were Kmart’s
advisers when the retailer tumbled into disarray. They played a critical role
in building the bomb known as Enron.
McDonald
is one of the few journalists to have not only parsed the record but also
penetrated the culture of McKinsey itself—a corporate mandarin elite whose
methods have been compared (by others and by themselves) to those of the
Jesuits or the U.S. Marines. They feel so strongly about themselves that they
have insisted on a proper noun where one need not exist. To an outsider, they
are a consulting firm. To themselves, simply, The Firm. This revealing book
uncovers the inner workings of what just might be the most influential private
organization in America.
Get more details @ http://www.ypcart.com/buy/the-firm-the-story-of-mckinsey-and-its-secret-influence-on-american-business-1439190976/
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