Some Facets Of The Relationship Between Consultants And Clients In Organizations

Although frequently represented as a critical aspect of consultancy, the relationship between consultants and their clients and its relevance to the achievement of successful outcomes are subjects to which few writers have devoted serious attention. In an earlier piece of research, the author concluded that an ‘interdependent’ relationship was likely to be an important factor in successful consulting assignments. He identified eight facets of this type of relationship. This paper describes how that theory was tested when three consultants, together with a number of their clients, explained why they thought their work together had been successful. The cases illustrate both the ways in which the relationships were built and the extent to which they were perceived as having been important ingredients in the outcomes achieved. The relationships described were characterized by high levels of mutual trust and interaction as well as contingency on the part of the consultants. In several respects the relationships were seen as interdependent. A feature of this study was that the extent to which the consultants found the research useful in a personal sense seemed to depend on the quality of the relationship between the author and the consultants. In the cases described the exercise seems to have been mutually beneficial. In another example this seems not to have been the case and the explanation seems to lie at least partly in a lack of interdependence.