Managing the interplay and tensions of consulting interventions

Abstract

Grounded in case study research, the consultant‐client relationship is conceived as mediating between, and reconciling, competing enactments. Through their work, consultants seek to achieve a separation from existing organisational frames of reference, commitments and routines. To achieve any separation, consultants have to challenge the world that is shared and lived out by members of the organisation. The enactments created and sustained by interventions are experienced as competitive versions of social reality, with diverse advocates, seeking to secure a critical mass of belief and acceptance. Consultants come under pressure to conform to, or to operate within, the constructs of this organisational reality, and their interventions create tensions and the need to accommodate differing views. The consultant‐client relationship, as experienced and perceived, is central to the process of generating shared constructions, and profoundly shapes the emergent organisational reality. Reviews traditional conceptualisations of the client‐consultant relationship and contrasts them to more critical and emancipatory perspectives. Then discusses the case study research and the role and nature of the consultant‐client relationship within the theoretical framework developed.