A Laboratory-Consultation Model for Organization Change

Behavioral change agents engaged in management and organization development efforts recognize as crucial, solutions to the recurring problems of entry and transfer. The major feature of the project reported here and still under way is the attempt to optimize both entry methods and transfer activities by a single developmental approach which includes the unique feature of using laboratory training to build a consulting relationship between internal consultants and their operating managers in an industrial organization.

The essential elements of the total design included: (a) laboratory training as an initiating vehicle, (b) the use of internal Trainer-Consultants, (c) the use of data collection and feedback, and (d) a single management and organizational conceptual framework. A single framework was used to overlay prelaboratory, laboratory, and postlaboratory activity. Data about each of the 25 participating managers were collected from peers and subordinates prior to the laboratory. The laboratory allowed each manager to receive data from other participants, to receive data from back-home work peers and subordinates, to establish a working consulting relationship with internal consultants, and, with them, to begin to formulate a plan of action for back-home application.

Initial results from back-home application within the organization indicate that these design features have reduced the entry and transfer problems experienced in utilizing laboratory earnings in organization development. However, certain problems still exist in transfer of learning, namely: uneven skill on the part of the managers to implement laboratory learnings, some lack of skill on the part of the Trainer-Consultants to intervene effectively, and the existence of certain organization conditions that do not support change.