1940–1950 PA was founded in 1943 as Personnel Administration by Ernest E. Butten, Tom H. Kirkham and Dr David Seymour. Britain's war effort created great demand for munitions and goods, which had to be produced by a relatively unskilled workforce. Butten and his colleagues formed Personnel Administration Limited to provide advice to industry as to how to improve the productivity of their workers. PA was an offshoot of the pre-war
Bedaux Company. Bedaux in turn had been developed based on the 'scientific management' theories of
Frederick Winslow Taylor and
Frank Gilbreth. Butten sought to take the mechanistic and task-orientated concepts of scientific management and add a human dimension to them. The chief idea, along the lines of
Douglas McGregor's '
Theory Y', was that by involving the worker in the process of change and a suitable form of ownership, greater gains could be made both by the worker and the organisation. PA's first assignment was to train volunteer women to assemble the tail gun section of Avro Lancaster bombers, as part of Britain's policy of bringing women into the factories to free up male workers for the armed forces.
1950–1970 By 1964, PA had dropped the name Personnel Administration and was known as simply PA Consulting Group. PA expanded and, by 1970, was the world’s largest management consulting firm by headcount. PA had also expanded geographically, mostly along the lines of the
Commonwealth, with its operations in Australia providing about a third of the firm's revenue.
1970–1992 During this period, PA found success in advising companies on potential applications of technology to business issues. This led to them building technology centres in
Melbourn, UK, and Princeton, USA.
Jeremy Asher became group CEO in 1998. The firm acquired Hagler Bailly Inc. in 2000 for around $96 million in cash. Government figures released in 2010 showed that PA was the second largest beneficiary of UK Government contracts to consulting firms, receiving £11million over the first year of the
coalition. It has gained publicity for its work on analysing what it has called the zombie economy. Other work includes its annual survey of opinion in higher education, and ongoing technological innovations, including a new type of round kitchen towel. On 31 December 2013, Jon Moynihan retired as executive chairman, and was replaced by
Marcus Agius, the former chairman of
Barclays Bank. In March 2014 the company launched a new logo (the third in its history), a new visual identity and redesigned website. Also in March 2014,
Health Select Committee member
Sarah Wollaston MP questioned PA Consulting's uploading of a
pseudonymised extract of
Hospital Episode Statistics to
Google BigQuery. The
Health and Social Care Information Centre confirmed that PA had used the data in accordance with the information sharing agreement in place.
2015–present In 2015,
The Carlyle Group bought a majority stake in the company, giving it a value of US$1 billion. In October 2017, PA relocated its global corporate headquarters. In April 2018, PA's chairman, Marcus Agius, announced he would step down and assume the role of deputy chairman, with John Alexander replacing him. Alexander made the move from environmental and sustainability consultancy
ERM, where he took the company through two rounds of private equity funding. In December 2018, PA announced it was appointing a new head of its Americas business, Ken Toombs. The group announced Ken Toombs as CEO in October 2020, following on from Alan Middleton who stepped down after 13 years as CEO of the consultancy. In November 2020, PA’s board announced its recommendation to accept a proposal by Jacobs Solutions to acquire a 65% stake in PA. Following a vote by PA shareholders and UK Court approval, the deal was finalised on 2 March 2021, valuing PA at £1.825 billion. In 2021, John Cala joined PA's business in the Americas. In 2022, PA appointed a new chief financial officer and chief information officer, and created new roles for a chief research officer, head of alliances, platforms and products, and head of markets.
Chartered Accountant Will Lambe joined as
CFO, moving from
KPMG, while Kelly Olsen joined as
CIO. Charlene Li, co-author of
Groundswell and founder of
Altimeter, became chief research officer. Rina Ladva joined the firm as head of alliances, platforms and products, making the move from
Microsoft. And Tracey Countryman took on the role of Head of Markets, joining PA from
Accenture. In 2023, Christian Norris was named as CEO. == Technology and innovation ==