Action and Case Research in

Management and Organizational

Contexts
Models of research engagement

Model 1: The purchase of information or the Expertise model:

Selling and Telling.

Model 2: The Doctor-Patient model.

Model 3 The process consultation model.

(Schein,1999)
Process Consultation:

A set of activities on the part of the consultant that help the

Client to perceive, understand and act upon the process
events that occur in the clients environment in order to
improve the situation as defined by the client.

(Schein,1999)
Process consultancy:
Assumes that one can only help a human system to help
itself.
(Schein,1999)

The goal is the development of an effective helping

relationship;
Process: i.e. How things are done between people and in
groups is as, or more, important than what is done;
Often clients do not really know what they want. Part of
your consultancy relationship is helping them define the
problems and issues.
10 Principles of process consultancy:

1. Always try to be helpful;

2. Always stay in touch with the current reality;
3. Access your ignorance;
4. Everything you do is an intervention;
5. It is the client who owns the problem and the solution;
6. Go with the flow;
7. Timing is crucial;
8. Be constructively opportunistic with confrontive interventions;
9. Everything is data, errors will always occur and are prime
sources of learning;
10 When in doubt, share a problem.

See also Scheins article on clients which also discusses process consultation.
 Communications: Observe, Identify,
Interruptions;
Member roles and functions: group building and
maintenance functions, individual functions;
Problem- Solving and decision making, group
consensus;
Group norms and growth;
Leadership and Authority.
(Harvey & Brown, 1996)
References
Harvey, D.F. & Brown, D.R. (1996). An Experiential
Approach to Organizational Development, Englewood Cliffs
NJ:Prentice-Hall 5th edition.
Schein, E.H., (1999). Process consultation revisited:
Building the helping relationship, Reading, Mass: Addison-
Wesley.