What Organizational Consultants Do and What it Takes to Become One: Commentary on Papers by Kenneth Eisold and Marc Maltz

Abstract

Relative to traditional professions like psychotherapy, organizational consulting includes more diverse practitioners and practices but far fewer formal requirements for entry or standards for practice. To define better boundaries around and within the field, I highlight the importance in Kenneth Eisold's and Marc Maltz's case material of distinguishing between organizational consultants and psychoanalysts and between different types of consultants in terms of their professional roles, services provided, and associated skills and knowledge. I underscore the value consultants bring to their clients when they are able to help diagnose and address performance issues that are at once social and operational, interpersonal and organizational, and unconscious and conscious.