As noted by Ivey (1993), consultation is a process of help/therapy commonly applied to individuals or families for the purpose of resolving conflict and introducing therapeutic change. However, the consultation process can also be applied to an organization. This paper describes and discusses the process of applying consultation services to the "organizational entity."
A comprehensive delineation of consultation as applied to the organization has been compiled by Brown, Pryzwansky and Schulte (1995). According to the authors, organizations hire consultants to produce change in the direction of making a firm or business more efficient and productive. Commonly, this is through resolving company conflicts.
Desired changes, according to Brown et. al (1995) are produced through a series of six consultation stages. These are: (1) pre-entry (consultant makes a reasonable decision about whether to work for the organization); (2) entry, problem exploration and contracting (consultant establishes consultation role and role-relations as well as the firm's resources and commitment with respect to goal changes; (3) information gathering, problem confirmation and goal setting (consultant operationalizes the problem and generates data); (4) solution searching and intervention selection (consultant shares data with managers and jointly devises solutions which are then applied); (5) evaluation (consultant determines whether desired changes have occurred); (6) termination (if changes have not occurred by this stage, consultant may investigate why these have not occurred.
The best way to understand the consultation process as it applies to the organizational setting is through an illustration. In response to an inordinate and growing number of customer complains, Alliance Technologies (a large organization making airplane engines and other parts) calls a consulting firm. Deciding that they have the time and the know-how, the consulti...