The Psychodynamics of Organization Development Consultants

Abstract

Preliminary interviewing of organization development consultants suggested that, first, they tended to have a strongly developed ability to idealize, and second, they tended to see themselves as being shy individuals with considerable interpersonal difficulties. Such findings, along with an analysis of organization development values taken from -the literature, were interpreted from an object relations viewpoint. From this a hypothesis regarding the psychodynamics of organization development consultants was developed. Operational measures were devised and data collected using the Object Relations Technique (Phillipson, 1973). Some indicative findings are reported from fieldwork and comparisons made with clinical groups. Discussion of the difficulties of interpretation and implications for practice of this explanatory work conclude the paper.