The Consultant-Client Relationship:A Systems-Theoretical Perspective

The aim of this paper is to explain consulting failure from a systems-theoretical perspectiveand to provide a new framework for analysing consultant–client relationships. By drawing onLuhmann’s systems theory, clients and consultants are conceptualised as two autopoieticcommunication systems that operate according to idiosyncratic logics. They are structurallycoupled through a third system, the so-called “contact system”, which constitutes a separatediscourse. Due to their different logics no transfer of meaning between the three discourses ispossible.[...]