The Realities of Organisational Consultancy Available to Purchase

The picture which typically emerges from literature on the work of organisation consultants, (Employee Relations Managers, Management Development Advisers, OD practitioners, etc) is that they operate “by the book”, moving in sequence through the various phases of a consultancy project (contacting, data‐collection, diagnosis etc), employing a repertoire of skills and techniques and carefully developing their expertise with the passage of time. The purpose of this article is to illustrate a rather different picture—one in which organisation consultants are subject to a wide variety of pressures and stresses and in response often develop defence mechanisms to cope with the realities of their situation. It draws on examples from the experience of one internal consultancy group in a public service organisation in the UK.