In a recent discussion between academics in the XMCA discussion list (xmca Digest, Vol 64, Issue 14), there was a question to Professor Yrjo Engeström about the difference between Change Laboratory and consultancy. His answer was:
A brief response to Steve Gabosch:
Business management consulting is a rather big for-profit industry. Some of its basic characteristics are: (a) consultants do it to make profit, (b) they produce their analyses and recommendations for management, not for the entire working community of a client organization to share, (c) the analyses and recommendations are proprietary and confidential, they are typically not published, (d) the methods and procedures used by the consultants are not subject to critical peer review.
Every project I undertake to study an organization, including projects which use the Change Laboratory as their method, follows a set of entirely different principles, namely: (a) it is not conducted to make profit; when the target organization agrees to fund some part of a project, it does so by entering into a research contract with my university, and the money received (besides the overhead) is spent on the salaries of members of my research group, typically doctoral students and postdocs, (b) the knowledge we produce in a project is made available to the entire working community of the organization, usually with special emphasis on trade union representation in the
monitoring of the project, (c) the analyses and findings are published, preferably in peer-reviewed journals and books but also in more popular publications, (d) our methods and procedures are made explicit, published, and subject to critical peer review.
Cheers,
Yrjö Engeström
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