Contributions to the History of Management Consulting in Communist Romania

This paper offers an overview of the development of management consulting in Romania, exploring some lesser known aspects of its evolution in the communist period. The research is focused on exploring the main historical facts of this evolution, trying to capture the elements of the struggle to develop a profession with many capitalist traits in a communist economy. After a brief presentation of the main aspects of local consulting before the end of World War II, a few important facts and ideas are presented regarding the profession in the first few years of the communist regime. Then, much of the paper is focused on the results of the historical research on the issue, in the more enlightened period of the 1960's and 1970's. The article ends with a discussion of the factors that inhibited the development of management consulting in Romania in the analyzed period.