컨설팅 사회

Abstract

'Consulting' is boming. This phenomenon should not be interpreted as a slight fashion or a superficial change. Instead, it should be analyzed with a social-theoretical view in connection with the structural characteristics of our (post)modern society and ways of constructing personal and collective life in it.As an outcome of this thesis, the researcher postulates that consulting is an attempt of social systems requiring an internal mechanism that can achieve stability and reduce complexity and risk given the lack of synthetic view and ultimate authority. In this sense, consulting is a mechanism of social systems for organizational self-reflection. But could consulting truly help achieve social stability and certainty? Unfortunately, the answer is negative. Consulting could neither make a new synthetic view nor promise better life planning objectively nor reduce risk consciousness. This is because consulting itself is a product of (post)modern thought and structure that are imanently fluid and relative. In this context, consulting should not be considered a mere new solution to our problem but also a semantic response of structural condition in the modern society that explains and justifies itself continuously. What produces consulting is not 'the' correct answer. Likewise, consulting does not make secure against nothing; nor is it complete in itself. In fact, the social function of consulting is a rather stable and lasting production of contingence and uncertainty in an institutional form.