Macht in der Organisationsberatung

Power in organization counseling. A qualitative study in a hospital in East Germany Power is a main topic of this analysis of a consulting process in an East German hospital: How power is appearing within organizational consulting? What is the power the client has, and the consultants have? And what is the interrelation between power and the resistance to change? In recourse to the theory of micropolitics, power is understood as the combination of rules and distribution of resources within an organization. The consulting process itself is interpreted as the consultant’s introduction to the ongoing game the organization is playing. The qualitative case study of the consulting process in an East German hospital clearly shows, how ineffective interventions remain, if the consultants fail to recognize and take into consideration the valid combination of rules and distribution of resources. In the presented case this combination is based on the peculiar history of East Germany. It was only after the project had failed that the consultants realized that they had been practiced upon.