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 Chris McKenna 

Courses taught

MBA: Business History.
MBA: Strategy.
Undergraduate: Introduction to Management.
Undergraduate: Strategy. 

Expertise

Business history
Professional service firms.

Overview

Christopher McKenna is particularly interested in the historical development and evolving strategies of professional firms and their role in the global transformation of business, nonprofits, and the state.

His first book on the growth of the elite management consulting firms, The World's Newest Profession, was awarded the 2004-2006 Newcomen-Harvard Book Award by the Business History Review, the 2007 Hagley Prize by the Business History Conference, and named one of the best books of the year by the Financial Times. McKenna's next book, Partners in Crime, will examine the international history of white collar crime from the Eighteenth Century to the present.

McKenna serves on the editorial boards of Organizational & Management History, Enterprise & Society and the Journal of American Studies. He is also an elected trustee of the Management History Research Group, the Association of Business Historians, and the Business History Conference as well as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. At the University of Oxford, McKenna is a founding member of the Centre for Professional Service Firms, serves on the Academic Committee of the Rothermere American Institute, and is a Fellow of Brasenose College. Adept in translating his academic work to popular audiences, McKenna’s research has been featured in The Harvard Business Review, The Sunday Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and The Financial Times.

An undergraduate in economics at Amherst College, McKenna first worked on Wall Street, and later in the City of London, before completing a doctorate in history at the Johns Hopkins University. McKenna has held research fellowships at Yale University, the Harvard Business School, and Georgetown Law and he has held visiting teaching appointments at Warwick Business School and the University of Toulouse. Prior to joining the Saïd Business School in 2000, he taught at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. A popular teacher of undergraduates, MBAs and executives, McKenna was nominated as one of Oxford University’s three best teachers for the UK's National Teaching Fellowship Award both in 2005 and 2006. 

Research interests

The international history of white collar crime.
The development and administration of professional firms.
The transmission and translation of management models.
The influence of professionals in shaping corporate governance.
Organisational and technological change since the Second Industrial Revolution.

Current projects

The international competition among law firms since 1945.
The development of corporate strategy as an academic discipline.
The use and abuse of history by management scholars.

Books:


Christopher D McKenna, The World's Newest Profession: Management Consulting in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2006). 

Book chapters:


Christopher D McKenna, “Give Professionalization a Chance!  Why Management Consulting May Yet Become a Full Profession,” in Stephen Ackroyd, Daniel Muzio, and Jean-Francois Chanlat, New Directions in the Study of Expert Labour: Medicine, Law and Management Consultancy (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming).

Christopher D McKenna, “Mementos: Looking Backwards at the Honda Motorcycle Case, 2003-1973,” in Steven Usselman and Sally Clarke (eds), Festschrift in Honor of Louis Galambos, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).  Reprinted in the Boston Consulting Group’s alumni magazine, ePanorama (June/July 2004).

Christopher D McKenna, “Why Every American University has a ‘Dean of Students’:  The Role of Management Consultants and the Carnegie Foundation in the Standardization of American Universities,” in Giuliana Gemelli, ed, University Foundations: Historical Roots and Institutional Configurations (Bologna, Baskerville Press, 2005), 43-68.

Christopher D McKenna, “Management Consulting,” in James Grossman, Ann Keating, and Jan Reiff, eds, The Encyclopedia of Chicago History (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2004).

Christopher D McKenna, “Message and Medium: The Role of Consulting Firms in Globalization and its Local Interpretation,” (with Marie-Laure Djelic and Antti Ainamo) in Marie-Laure Djelic and Sigrid Quack (eds), Globalization and Institutions: Redefining the Rules of the Economic Game (Edward Elgar, 2003) 83-107.

Journal articles:

Christopher D McKenna, "Writing the Ghost-Writer Back In:  Alfred Sloan, Alfred Chandler, John McDonald and the Intellectual Origins of Corporate Strategy," Management and Organizational History, Vol 1, No 2 (May 2006):107-126.

Christopher D McKenna, “INQUIRE: A Case Study in Evaluating the Potential of Online MCQ Tests in a Discursive Subject,” (with Sophie Clark, Katharine Lindsay, and Steve New), ALT-J: Research in Learning Technology, Vol 12, No 3 (September 2004): 251-262.

Christopher D McKenna, “The World’s Newest Profession:  Management Consulting in the Twentieth Century,” Enterprise & Society, Vol 2, No 4 (December 2001): 673-679.

Christopher D McKenna, “Two Strikes and You’re Out:  The Demise of the New York Herald Tribune,” The Historian, Vol, 63, No 2 (Winter 2001): 287-308.

Christopher D McKenna, “‘Le Défi Américain:’ McKinsey & Company’s Role in the Transfer of Decentralization to Europe, 1957-1975,” (translated into Italian) in Nuova Civiltà delle Macchine (Spring 1999).  Reprinted in Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings (1997), 226-231.

Christopher D McKenna, “‘Better Living Through Chemistry?’ Industrial Accidents and Masculinity at DuPont, 1890-1930,” Entreprises et Histoire, No 17 (December 1997): 9-21. 

Christopher D McKenna, “Agents of Adhocracy: Management Consultants and the Reorganization of the Executive Branch, 1947-1949,” Business and Economic History, Vol 25, No 1 (Fall 1996): 101-111.

Christopher D McKenna, “The Origins of Modern Management Consulting,” Business and Economic History, Vol 24, No 1 (Fall 1995): 51-58.

Contact Details

Saïd Business School
University of Oxford
Park End Street
Oxford
OX1 1HP
UK

Chris.McKenna@sbs.ox.ac.uk 

+44 (0)1865 288920 

 

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Created at 21/08/2009 12:27  by Hazel Fry 
Last modified at 01/11/2010 17:12  by Hazel Fry