Felix Corthouts

Process Consultation Revisited: Taking a Relational Practice Perspective

Process consultation as conceived and reformulated several times by Edgar Schein constitutes a seminal contribution to the process of organization development in general and to the definition of the helping role of the consultant in particular. Under the pressure of a pragmatic turn in organizational change work, the practice of process consultation was fading away during the eighties and nineties. In some particular training and organizational consulting contexts nevertheless, the foundational principles and practices of process consultation are experienced to be more relevant than ever before. A relational constructionist theoretical lens, an emphasis on joint consultant—client practices, and a proper contextual embedding constitute a relational practice perspective that embodies in a new form and language those foundational ideas.

Identity Transformation as an Intercontextual Process

Societal and organizational change requires people to change their professional identity continuously. Starting from two theoretical traditions that address identity and learning, the authors analysed the learning narratives of two sets of learners – participants in a two-year experiential learning programme and student interns, both in the domain of organizational behaviour. They then developed a model of transformational learning for two aspects of a learners professional identity: (1) the change in concepts and images that relate to who we consider ourselves to be; and (2) the development of a healthy self-worth and self-confidence. This differentiation of transformational learning into two distinct and complementary processes constitutes the contribution of this research to the theoretical understanding of identity transformation. By means of the notion of ‘intercontextuality’, the authors also describe the process that integrates the individual sense-making perspective and the relational–participatory perspective on identity learning.

Developing professional learning environments: model and application

In this article we offer a number of insights and instruments to facilitate the realisation of learning communities in professional training contexts, and in the context of adult education in general. We direct our attention towards environments that support the development of professional skills that follow the line of the behavioural sciences, and more especially management competencies and organisation psychology competencies. Firstly, we give a brief outline of our view of learning and the general approach that this may require. We then go on to present a number of theoretical viewpoints mainly from an experiential, and from a constructionist, situated learning perspective. We structure our argument introducing three concepts: orientation, elaboration and integration. Simultaneously, we illustrate our point with a case: CIGO, 1 a training program that regards the development of variable competencies with reference to change within groups and organisations. Finally, we discuss the model/method more critically, which leads us to its refinement, showing the tensions between the practice of orienting, elaborating and integrating within a learning trajectory.