Systemic in-house consulting: an answer to building change capacities in complex organizations

ABSTRACT

Challenged by the increase in parallel change projects, many organizations have created internal change consulting teams. One theoretically inspiring and practically important phenomenon that we find in our empirical context of a German multinational company is systemic in-house consulting (SIHC). This change consulting approach, which intervenes on the back of strong system-theoretical considerations, faces a paradoxical challenge: to consult on organizational change from within, without the cachet of an external expert. Using the case of an automotive supplier creating SIHC as a coping resource for multiple, heterogeneous, and parallel change processes, the article both examines and illustrates SIHC. We argue that increasing change needs have the potential to stimulate organizational change capacity and that SIHC offers one very concrete and workable expression.

KEYWORDS:

• In-house consulting
• change capacity
• multiple change contexts
• system theory
• phenomenon-driven research

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Prof. Dr Thomas Schumacher ([email protected]) is professor for leadership and organization at the Catholic University of Applied Sciences in Freiburg, Germany, head of the research programme ‘Systemic Management’ and lecturer at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. He is co-editor of the Journal ‘OrganisationsEntwicklung’. He is also partner of the osb Vienna Consulting, a Management and Organizational Development consultancy. His research interests relate to management and organisational development, change management and strategy development.

Martin Scherzinger ([email protected]) is Director of Corporate Organizational Development at ZF Friedrichshafen Company in Friedrichshafen, Germany. After his master degree in sociology at University of Heidelberg, he worked for Daimler in Stuttgart, Germany and joined ZF Friedrichshafen in 2002.