A Comparative Study of Consulting Processes and Group Development

The impact of three organizational development consulting processes is analyzed and compared in terms of prelaboratory interaction between consultant and client, interaction during laboratory sessions (trainer role and behavior, session climate and content), and postlaboratory interaction. Results indicate that the success of the development programs could be much better explained by whether there were prelaboratory and postlaboratory consultant activities than by variations in trainer role and behavior or by differences in content and climate of training sessions. Thus the conditions which clearly resulted in outstanding growth in group effectiveness and interaction patterns were (a) utilization of the laboratory as only one part of an integrated, ongoing, context-related development program in which the consultant used prelaboratory and postlaboratory time to gather and act upon his knowledge about the workgroup and its organizational context, and (b) the utilization of an internal consulting group which facilitated data gathering and action steps by both client and consultant. The underlying cause for the superiority of an integrated development program over a single laboratory program seems to be the increased acquisition and utilization of knowledge by the consultant of the workgroup and its organizational context.

Among programs which relied entirely upon laboratory sessions (with no prework or postwork), the results were disappointing: programs in which laboratory sessions were essentially sensitivity training sessions resulted (six months later) in a greater sense of involvement by members of the workgroup but had little or no impact on other group dimensions of effectiveness and interaction. Conversely, laboratories which were active, conceptual, and analytical of processes and participants had no impact upon member involvement and trust and resulted in minimum increases in group effectiveness.