In a 1953 presentation,Marvin said:
We are what we speak—it defines us—it is our image. We don’t have customers, we have clients.We don’t serve within an industry, we are a profession.We are not a company, we are not a business. We are a firm. We don’t have employees, we have firm members and colleagues who have individual dignity. We don’t have business plans, we have aspirations.We don’t have rules, we have values. We are management consultants only. We are not managers, promoters, or constructors. And we are no longer executive recruiters.The big development in concentrating our efforts in our own field came in 1939 when we severed our affiliations with Scovell,Wellington & Company, then exclusively an auditing firm. At that time, we gave up calling ourselves “management engineers” and pioneered in using the designation “management consultants.” Over the years, since 1939, we have resisted various excursions into side lines; and our convictions in this aspect of our firm personality are deep and well crystallized.
