The really important problems

The problems consultants are called upon to solve are often not the really important underlying ones [agree (1) – disagree (7)][1]

This question involves the direction of the organisation, its mission and how it functions because you are looking at change and can’t ask people there to think of a different way of delivering the service. I anticipate the answer to this question will be different according to the relationship with consultants. Gattiker & Larwood designed the question in order to examine the political dimensions of the client-consultant relationship. The political dimension might be hiring a consultant in the belief that a consultant could lend meaningful weight to support a particular position, especially when bringing about change. So they anticipated finding that consultants might not know the important underlying issues behind their being hired. What the research found was that clients & consultants response to this question didn’t vary significantly from the expected chance value, so evidence for political hiring was mixed.

But that question need not be interpreted as about politics, but rather about choosing to consult on the right issues for the right reasons, and there is a need to account for that choice, isn’t there?

Secondly, G&L examined data from top-level personnel and it may be that lower level personnel have different perspectives on those reasons, and require different accountabilities. G&L suggest that “lower-level personnel have less need for influencing changes in organisational direction”, which might be true, but OTH if such personnel want to keep their jobs after change, then they would have different interests, different accountabilities and different responses from the executives. And public sector employees have different forces acting on them from corporations.

The weltanschauung of accountability to public is not the same as that of protecting jobs. Here, the accountability is for improving service not about change, but less cost and fewer people. But employing fewer people again implies that jobs are lost, and there is accountability for loss of jobs. (In a British society – a democratic society requires accountability, but an American culture will be less concerned with loss of jobs than a British one. Stakeholders in a British culture will include the workers and their union reps)

---

[1] Gattiker, U. E. and L. Larwood (1985). "Why do clients employ management consultants?" Consultation 4(Summer 8756-6508): 119-129.