Process Consultation Within and Across Cultures

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to consider how process consultants can effectively manage challenges both within and across cultures. This study investigates the multidimensional aspects of process consultation for workgroups that consist of diverse individuals in postmodern organizations. A proposed conceptual framework is developed to include factors that are useful for process consultants to consider when working in multicultural contexts. The micro-multicultural framework integrates the cultural mosaic with Schein’s ORJI (Observation, Reaction, Judgment, and Intervention) cycle. The framework represents the multidimensional aspects of cultural identities and explores verbal and nonverbal communication patterns during process consultation. A checklist for micro-multicultural process consultation is also proposed to demonstrate how a process consultant can perform his or her primary role comprehensively while considering process consultation as group-level phenomena.