COVER -- CONTENTS -- ABOUT THE AUTHORS -- EDITORS' FOREWORD -- PREFACE -- Chapter 1. Organizational consultation in a systemic perspective -- When consultation is considered -- Chapter 2. Organizational consultation and learning -- Learning in organizations -- Stages in the collective learning process -- Consultation as the staging of collective learning processes -- Methodological considerations and the collective learning process -- Chapter 3. "Assess our manager and expose his shortcomings": a consultation in a private company -- Case study -- A systemic model of learning -- The consultant's final reflections -- Putting systemic concepts into practice -- Chapter 4. "Free us from the past!": a consultation in a municipality -- Case study -- Turning systemic ideas into practice -- Chapter 5. Key concepts in systemic thinking -- 5.1 First- and second-order cybernetics -- 5.2 The linear and the circular line of thinking -- 5.3 From neutrality to irreverence -- 5.4 The professional domains -- 5.5 Hypothesizing -- 5.6 Interventions -- Chapter 6. The consultant's cognitive processes in practice: When two consultants work together -- How I learned to be an organizational consultant -- Cooperating with other consultants: Similarities and discrepancies -- Cooperating with internal consultants -- The consultant's own learning: the qualitative leap -- Chapter 7. The consultant's cognitive processes in practice: receiving supervision -- How I learned to be an organizational consultant -- Supervision -- Receiving supervision and the individual learning spiral -- Chapter 8. Epilogue -- Consultation work requires personal development -- Consultation work is a learning process in itself -- The end of the information society? -- Future leaders have to be experts at learning processes -- REFERENCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX.