Group relations and organizational consultation: Rediscovering our roots

Group relations conferences were originally created as a tool to assist the organizational interventions of consultants as well as a contribution understanding the larger field of organizational development. Today they have become separated from that purpose. As a result, they have tended to become ends in themselves, the learning has often come to seem existential in nature, and the organizational effort to mount them has frequently assumed a somewhat religious quality. In recent years, however, several training programs have emerged out of the Group Relations movement, programs that have sought to link up the powerful learning about group and system dynamics provided by conferences with the actual practice of organizational intervention.