Consultants and Organizational Learning

Consultants as agents of organizational learning: the importance of marginality

by Ariane Berthoin Antal

co-authored with Camilla Krebsbach-Gnath
A revised version of this paper was published in M. Dierkes, A. Berthoin Antal, J. Child & I. Nonaka (eds.). Handbook of Organizational Learning and Knowledge, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2001.

This article explores the wide range of roles that consultants can play to either enable or hinder organizational... more This article explores the wide range of roles that consultants can play to either enable or hinder organizational learning processes. A core concept in this analysis is the achievement of an appropriate "marginality" of the consultants’ role, in order to allow the organizational members to maintain the "centrality" for themselves that is needed to assure that learning is retained in the organization. The article argues that a number of
forces can conspire to propel the consultants to central roles, and thereby impede rather than promote organizational learning. The clarification and negotiation of roles between the consultants and the members of the organization are therefore treated as a key process in determining the impact of consultants’ interventions on organizational learning.