McKinsey & Company is an American global consulting firm that was founded in 1926. One of the foremost consultancy firms in the world, McKinsey offers a wide array of management consulting services such as the development of business restructuring plans and revival strategies, offers advice on downsizing or even acquisition. McKinsey’s global teams of consultants are involved in the design and implementation of studies to examine managerial decisions using data to test their hypothesis. Findings of these studies are presented to management to guide reform (Kiechel, 2010) . McKinsey is regarded as one of the most prestigious consultancies in its field and typically charges higher fees compared to her peers. Between 2002 and 2013, multiple surveys ranked the company as the best consulting firm in the world (Mahoney & Sturdy, 2015) .
One of McKinsey’s greatest fortes is its long history as a management consultancy and therefore a long-standing contribution to managerial thought and practice. When James McKinsey, a professor of accounting, started the firm1926, he called it ‘an accounting and management firm.’ It was primarily involved in providing advice on accounting principles as part of management. McKinsey got his first partner in 1929 and hired the first employee in 1933. The company’s initial years were successful, and by 1932, it had opened a second office in New York (Huey, 1993) . Despite the merger, conflicts characterized the company in the late 1930’s as it expanded significantly in the 1940’s and 1950’s, more so into Europe. The company had 88 employees by early 1950s and 200 in the 1960s. These employees were distributed across its six offices in the US and six abroad. By this time, half of the company’s revenues came from abroad. Towards the end of the 1960s, McKinsey saw reduced revenues partly owing to intensified competition from emerging actors like Bain & Company and Boston Consulting Group (Kiechel, 2010) . A 1971 commission formed by McKinsey came to the finding that the company had concentrated too much on geographic expansion while not adequately building on industry knowledge. This saw the company move away from a generalist approach by coming up with fifteen specialized groups within the organization (Mahoney & Sturdy, 2015) .
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Between 1994 and 2003, McKinsey grew from 2,900 employees to 7,700 and increased its locations from 58 to 84, thus cementing its global leadership in the industry. This acceleration, according to some, is attributable to the windfall profits it made helping internet startups (Chu, 2014) . Today, McKinsey operates using a decentralized management structure with various offices operating similarly though independently. The one firm principle has been a long tradition at McKinsey. It requires consultants to put overall company’s interests first before those of individual offices. Since the company’s budget is centralized, individual office revenues are pooled together and each office’s revenue performance does not determine its finances (Mahoney & Sturdy, 2015) . McKinsey consultants are either functional experts, industry experts or generalists. With 23 industry practice areas, nine functional practices working in fields like risk, marketing and finance, and five solutions and capabilities areas linked to technology consulting, such a diversified workforce is crucially important.
McKinsey culture is one of the firm’s jewels. Marvin Bower in 1937 created McKinsey’s values and principles that are treasured as part of the organizational culture (Mahoney & Sturdy, 2015) . For instance, consultants are expected to put the client’s interests before the firm’s financial interests, not divulge clients’ information, always tell the truth even if to clients and perform only requisite work. This culture has hugely contributed to the appeal of McKinsey in the eyes of prospective clients and employees (McKaiser, 2017) . Given that many former McKinsey consultants go on to occupy key positions in numerous companies, McKinsey culture has spread considerably (Mahoney & Sturdy, 2015) .
With 127 offices across the globe and 27,000 employees, the company’s revenue stood at over $10 billion by the end of 2017. According to Forbes, this makes the firm the largest consulting firm in the world and one of America’s best mid-size employers. And yet, despite the firm’s remarkable success, it has also been a subject of major criticisms that have undoubtedly dented its image. Critics, for instance, charge that despite the firm laying claims to a strong ethical culture, the string of scandals that have plagued it and her employees’ points to flaws. The Independent, for instance, has reported that some of the most spectacular financial debacles and corporate scandals in recent years have McKinsey’s fingerprints (Chu, 2014) . The most notable example is the Enron scandal which was created by a McKinsey consultant. According to media reports, the firm had endorsed the suspicious accounting techniques employed by Enron which led to its implosion in 2001 (McKaiser, 2017) . The Guardian Newspaper has reported that Enron employed McKinsey’s services up to 20 times, a position that the company has remained cagey about.
To others, McKinsey also had a huge role to play in the global financial crisis of 2008 through its advice to banks and promotion of securitization of mortgage assets which precipitated the credit meltdown. It is also worth pointing out that a number of McKinsey executives have been convicted on various charges. The most notable example was that of former McKinsey Managing Director Rajat Gupta. Gupta was found guilty of insider trading in 2012 and sentenced for two years in prison. It later emerged that Gupta had other associates within McKinsey. More recently in 2017, the firm has been implicated in corruption scandals in South Africa where it stands accused of using dubious means to acquire government contracts (The Economist, 2017) . To a huge number of critics, therefore, the alleged McKinsey culture has permitted numerous scandalous incidents and therefore is a culture of corruption.
References
Chu, B. (2014). McKinsey: How does it always get away with it? The Independent .
Huey, J. (1993). HOW MCKINSEY DOES IT. CNN Money .
Joe Mahoney, A. S. (2015). Power and the diffusion of management ideas: The case of McKinsey & Co. Management Learning .
Kiechel, W. (2010). Lords of Strategy: The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World. Harvard Business Press .
McKaiser, E. (2017). Why McKinsey is not innocent. The New York Times .
The Economist. (2017). Why McKinsey is under attack in South Africa. The Economist .
