ABSTRACT
Bringing together the various threads in order to map the history of management consulting in Britain has been a similar exercise to that of completing a jigsaw puzzle in which a number of the important pieces are missing. One major piece of this particular puzzle, and the one that has proved the most elusive, is identifying that point in time when management consulting first became established as a form of service in Britain Potentially, it could have coincided with the inception of management itself, the dating of which has proven to be equally problematic because the act of management has existed ever since human activities have involved organisation and co-operation in some form or another (Urwick and Brech 1946b). 1
