External Consultants

External consultants often have a higher status as compared to internal consultants. Employees will see them as experts in this field. They hold more power due to the independence given to the task. They can be candid and this gives them the benefit to probe difficult or sensitive issue and assess the organisation more objectively. They have greater autonomy as compared to internal consultants. They have varied experience and broader perspective due to their profession in this field. However, they may apply old solutions from their past experiences to existing problems.

To make the best out of everything, organisation can engage both internal and external consultants to be in the consulting team together as both parties share a common goal; which is to resolve the organisation problem. External consultants can contribute their special expertise and clear objectivity and rely on internal consultant information and knowledge of the organisation. Both parties need to come to a common consensus which will tailor to the specific needs and capabilities of the organisation. It is also more efficient to share the workload and possibly more accomplishing than working on the problem alone. Moreover, duties can be split out in a more purposeful manner. Internal consultants can deal with the client directly while external consultants can provide specialise service or training to the client, thus transferring the skills and knowledge to the organisation.

Many organisations have invested to build their own organisation development consultants as a means of instigating change. This is an investment in getting ahead of managing change. Moreover, the cost to involve external change agent to get up with the speed with culture and values of the organisation is expensive in time and money.

Two obvious benefits of getting internal change consultants are cost and access to information. They will be no extra cost for hiring, as compared to hiring a external change