Jørgen Bloch-Poulsen

Self-referentiality as a power mechanism Towards dialogic action research

The article is a first- and second-person inquiry into power relations between action researchers and participants based on a dialogic action research project with a group of managers at Bang & Olufsen, Denmark. It focuses on discrepancies between our espoused values of dialogue and our theories-in-use characterized by self-referentiality. This concept emerged during the process and describes a non-dialogic way of transforming the perspectives of the other into your own a priori categories and ways of relating. It denotes a power mechanism imposing our regime of truth on participants so that their reality does not count. First- and second-person reflection on self-referentiality is a process of mutual vulnerability and seems to enhance the quality of third-person action and research.

The challenge of the unspoken in organizations: Caring container as a dialogic answer?

This article reports on a combined research and training project that we conducted with a group of managers and directors in a large Danish industrial company. The article presents a model in which dialogues are seen as conditioned by particular dialogic competencies, defined as particular ways of being. Together they create a combination of a dialogic room and rhythm, which we call a caring container. This article focuses on how our own communication as researchers and trainers contributes to a dialogic praxis in organizations, but also functions sometimes to prevent it. The unspoken is not only a challenge to the members of the organization, but to ourselves, too. The article demonstrates that part of the unspoken can be said between a manager and an employee across differences in organizational status, when we all succeed to create a caring container in the training context. The perspective of the article is that dialogues contribute to establishing more transparent and symmetrical relations in organizations.

Power and contexts: Some societal conditions for organisational action research – Clashes between economic-management and pedagogic-social discourses

Based on action research co-operation with a team of teachers at a Social and Healthcare College in Denmark 2012-2013, the article raises the question: What are the conditions for organisational action research projects in a neoliberal context? The article has three purposes. Firstly, we want to show that mapping and delimitating relevant contexts are critical in an organisational AR project, because it is always arbitrary what you delimit as your field of inquiry, initially. The consequences of ignoring this in the project described were fatal. Secondly, the article draws attention to clashes between two societal Discourses: an economic-management Discourse versus a pedagogic-social Discourse. Unfortunately, we were not aware of the strength and the extent of the economic-management Discourse before it was too late. Thirdly, the article speaks in favor of continuous context inquiring dialogues with immediate and additional stakeholders questioning, among others, if the action research project is practicable at all.