ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the meaning of some of the new features of modern organizational experience from the consultant's point of view, and presents some of the practical and theoretical tensions and dilemmas inherent in the world encountered by the consultant as part of his or her daily engagement. The organizational "script" is being continuously rewritten, via a process of continuous interactive negotiation. The organization produces and reproduces itself in an unceasing turmoil of change, but somehow remains stable, and well-bounded in its overall identity and patterning. As complexity in deregulated, networked environments threaten to escape central control mechanisms, so "risks" and risk management strategies proliferate. The nature of the psychological tie between workers and management, and all employees and the organizational unit, has altered. The psychological investment is in the work itself while the employing organization is little more than a convenient, and often temporary, location for practising one's professional competence.
