Scope and Relevance

The AOC programme offers a comprehensive learning environment that results in immediate benefit for participants and their clients. Organisations gain an improved quality of service from their consultants as confidence and competence increase. Shadow consultancy, during and between modules, provides creative ideas for continuing change projects, including in-depth consideration for especially difficult situations. 

Individuals develop competence through integrating new inputs on theory and practice with previous experiences and current projects. Exposure to varied examples of managing the consultant role encourage an appreciation of a range of ways of working with complex processes of group, organisational and technological change. Participants can also expand their repertoire of consulting approaches and techniques by engaging with their colleagues' learning agendas. 

Graduates of the AOC programme can join the Tavistock Institute's Advanced Organisational Change and Consulting Society, a professional association dedicated to continued improvement in members' practices and to developing practical theory about organisational consultancy.

AOC is demanding and is recommended to people whose current positions require continual improvement in group development, organisational change and/or technological innovation. Such candidates are likely to be in the following types of roles:

• group and organisational consultant, operating externally and independently;
• management and organisational development specialist, working within an organisation;
• general manager or technical manager, operating internally, with responsibilities for managing organisational and technological change; and
• service provider, external or internal, facing increasing demands for group and organisational development.

Successful applicants will already have experience and basic competence relevant to organisational consulting in the form of: basic training in group or organisational consultancy; experience of working on organisational and technological change issues; or experience of applying psychodynamic understandings within groups or organisations.

Those who successfully complete the AOC Programme will be awarded the Tavistock Institute Qualification in Advanced Organisational Change and Consulting . Participants who successfully complete additional academic requirements will be awarded the Master's degree or Postgraduate Diploma in Advanced Organisational Change and Consulting from City University, London.