This volume is a joint publication in the Research in Management Consulting and Contemporary Trends in Organizational Change and Development series. This dual focus reflects the reality that consulting for organizational change is a special type of management consultation, a complex field of endeavor that requires a broad range of skills and competencies. To be truly effective, change-related consulting requires a unique client-consultant relationship, a special set of consulting skills, an expertise in human and organizational systems, and significant personal qualities. It is in high demand in a world full of change. Yet, we still know relatively little theoretically about this type of consulting and have relatively little empirical evidence about what actually works and why.
As the contributors amply illustrate, the Organization Development (OD) field has a well developed set of frameworks, technologies, and models of change. Still we need to focus on and learn more about the role of the OD consultant as a special kind of change agent. A goal of this joint volume is to increase that specific body of knowledge and provide an illustration of much needed collaboration in bringing all possible resources to bear on our understanding of an increasingly critical and essential form of consulting.