Midwifery and Dialogue in Organizations. Emergent, Mutual Involvement in Action Research

This book deals with a dialogic organizational development process carried out with managers and employees in the Research & Development Department of Bang & Olufsen, Denmark. This action research project did not start with ready-made concepts to be implemented. They were developed during the process. That goes for the understanding of dialogue as sharing, daring and caring; for dialogic competencies as, e.g., confirmation and meta-communication; and for generatively facilitated conversations as midwifery. The methodology is accordingly characterized as emergent, mutual involvement. The book is a dialogue between theory and praxis, too. It integrates research, action, and training as well as theories of interpersonal and organizational communication, Roger’s humanistic psychology, Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, and Buber’s philosophy of dialogue. The empirical material consists of approximately 50 colleague supervision or midwifery conversations and group-feedback sessions; and of 24 staff appraisal interviews or development conversations, which we followed on a monitor in an adjoining room. After each of these conversations, a feedback session was held. In the book you will find transcripts and analyses of these live conversations.We hope to have a dialogue with graduate students and colleagues doing similar research and training. As well as with reflective practitioners working as organizational and process consultants, coaches, trainers, mediators, facilitators, etc.