The emergence of modern management theory coincides with the birth of business consulting, an indication of their shared genesis in the new culture of efficiency. [...] Harrington Emerson (1906), Gilbreth Inc. (1912), and Booz Allen HAmilton (1914), were founded. The nearly parallel development of management theory and consulting can be convincingly explained by the fact that the latter was presented as a special form of expertise with which the newcomers promised to provide orientation to executives bewildered by social and technological upheavals. [...]