Cliff Oswick
Professor of Organization Theory and Deputy Dean Cass Business School City University London, UK
Dialogic Organization Development is an absolute ‘must read’ book for academics, practitioners and students who claim to have an interest in processes of planned organizational change. The elaboration of dialogic OD offered in this edited collection is accessible, engaging and comprehensive. The editors and contributors pull off the rather rare feat of presenting thoughtful and thought-provoking insights which are both conceptually-rich and pragmatically-grounded. Writing an endorsement is easy when a book is this good!
David Cooperrider
Fairmount | David L. Cooperrider Professor of Appreciative Inquiry Department of Organizational Behavior Case Western Reserve University, USA
Gervase Bushe and Bob Marshak are a kind of next OD generation Bennis-Schein tandem—gifted thinkers each in their own right, but together even more daring as they are leading the new OD to its next major stage. Imagine what early OD would have been without the exciting union of academic rigor and powerful practice that the Schein-Bennis team so aptly perfected. Well the Bushe-Marshak collaboration, together with an amazing collection of other leaders in the field, has done the same and more: they’ve challenged much in our past and have somehow also achieved a joyous homecoming to what matters most in OD—it’s the democratic, dialogic, jointly created design of the fully human organization.
Jean M. Bartunek
Robert A. and Evelyn J. Ferris Chair Professor of Management and Organization Boston College, USA
OD is back, thanks to Gervase Bushe and Bob Marshak. Bushe and Marshak have conceptualized OD in a way that is both novel and integrates crucial foundational principles of OD as they have evolved over time. It is the first truly “new” approach to OD in many years. The claims made are not, however, solely “theoretical”. The book is based on considerable successful practice. Many of its chapter authors are recognized experts in the topics being discussed. In some cases these chapter authors have helped to create the scholarly foundations of a dialogic mindset; in other cases they have developed the practices that embody such a mindset. This book is more than welcome. It will be central to the scholarship and practice of OD for years to come.
Harrison Owen
Creator of Open Space Technology
The wisdom and experience captured between the covers of this book is truly impressive and the authors bring the insights of our age to bear on the questions at hand with a useful and powerful effect. Definitely a good read and also a warm invitation to address the questions at new and deeper levels.
David W. Jamieson
Professor, Organization Learning & Development University of St Thomas President, Jamieson Consulting Group, Inc. USA
In this first comprehensive treatment of Dialogic OD, Bushe and Marshak have brought greater clarity to how this new form of OD is both different and related to foundational OD and assembled an outstanding collection of theories and practices to ground this work for the future. In this book, one gets a clear sense that ‘dialogic’ is bringing OD into the new, contemporary contexts, so real today, and so different from the contexts in which foundational OD was developed. This is an essential work for graduate OD education and advanced understanding of the evolving field.
Juanita Brown
Co-author,The World Cafe: Shaping our Futures Through Conversations That Matter
In this insightful compendium, Dialogic Organization Development honors and builds on the values of the founders of the field with more recent understandings drawn from complexity theory, social construction, and cognitive sciences. Dialogic OD takes our field into exciting new territory, rich with possibility for enlivening organizations and communities through the lived experience of being able to change the conversation, and thus, change the future. May this important book find a wide and receptive audience!
Loizos Heracleous
Professor of Strategy and Organization Warwick Business School, UK and Associate Fellow, Oxford University, UK
Dialogic Organization Development will prove to be a milestone in the evolution of organization development as both a conceptual heritage and a process consultation practice. The chapters in this volume enrich current understandings of organization development and push boundaries .
Ian Palmer
Pro Vice-Chancellor (Business) and Vice President RMIT University, Australia
OD is in the midst of its own transformation. Bushe and Marshak's Dialogic Organization Development, with its A-list of authors and contributors, is the much needed book that puts the stake in the ground upon which that transformed future will be built.
Richard W. Woodman
Fouraker Professor of Business and Professor of Management, Texas A & M University, USA. Former editor of the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, and Research in Organizational Change and Development.
Dialogic Organization Development promises to further energize and advance the field of OD during a time in the evolution of organizations when we need all the help we can get in terms of designing and effectively managing complex social systems. The collection of papers in this volume represents a significant contribution to the literature of the field.
Anil Sachdev
Founder & CEO, Grow Talent and School of Inspired Leadership Gurgaon, India
Gervase Bushe and Bob Marshak have done a commendable job in contributing to the field of OD. By inviting a number of gifted people to co-create this book, they have come out with an outstanding product. Looking back at the past with an introspective eye, sharing deep insights from contemporary work and stimulating new questions for the future- this is a rich tapestry of learning that is bound to create much joy and excitement amongst researchers, students, teachers and practitioners. I strongly endorse this book and pray that it touches many people all over the world.
Theo H. Veldsman
Professor and Chair, Department of Industrial Psychology and People Management, University of Johannesburg, South Africa
Dialogic Organization Development, as so masterfully presented in this book, provides a “must have” travelling mind set and guide book for organisations wishing to constructively and sustainably engage and embed themselves in emerging economies that are in the throes of undergoing radical transformation.
Dr. Mee-Yan Cheung-Judge
Director of Quality & Equality, LTD, United Kingdom Senior Fellow, Roffey Park Management Institute and Singapore Civil Service College.
This is an exciting and much needed book! Bushe and Marshak with the help of a global team of scholar-practitioners have brought us a comprehensive discussion that pulls together the latest thinking and practices shaping the field of Organization Development. Offering a compelling and integrative framework called the Dialogic OD Mindset they provide clarity and integrity to dialogic ways of working with leaders and organizations. This is a book you will return to many times!
Rudolf Wimmer
Prof. for Leadership & Organization Vice-President, University Witten/Herdecke, Germany
The revival of the theoretical traditions of OD has been pending for a long time. At last, this very remarkable book by Gervase Bushe and Bob Marshak provides an up-to-date conceptual framework and a corresponding mindset for the further development of the OD approach. Dialogic Organization Development is about to close a painful gap in the scientific community and among practitioners. It will certainly be a valuable contribution to important research in the field of applied sciences. I hope this new volume, with its rich variety of contributions, will find a broad reception, especially in Europe.
John D. Adams
Emeritus Professor and Program Chair Organizational Systems Ph.D. Program, Saybrook University, USA
As OD has developed over the past 55 or so years, one aspect has become predominant – an “allopathic” approach of diagnosing symptoms and prescribing treatment. From the beginning, there have also been more implicit, less tangible, more subjective and emergent OD processes that, until recently, have been given less attention over the decades by most mainstream practitioners. Dialogic Organization Development brings a much-needed focus on, and strengthening of, these less rational and mechanistic processes that honor the emergence of new meaning, new thinking, and new understanding of the systems we work and live in.
By focusing more attention on what is trying to emerge, and by providing a different narrative about what is essential to successful OD practice in this age of increasing turbulence and complexity, this unusually well integrated anthology will certainly disrupt the status quo of prevailing contemporary OD practices.
Ann L Cunliffe
Professor of Organization Studies University of Leeds, UK
Dialogic Organization Development connects the theory and practice worlds through a compelling and accessible explanation of a different way of doing OD, which, as Ed Schein says in the Forward “could not have arrived at a better time”. The book is full of rich resources for existing and potential dialogic OD consultants and researchers.
Claus D. Jacobs
Professor of Strategic Management and Organization, Berne University of Applied Sciences and University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. Associate Fellow, University of Oxford, UK
This book is a most compelling and much needed resource to further substantiate Dialogic Organization Development as a historically mindful, yet revitalized OD approach to understand and orchestrate organizational change. Utterly solid in its theoretical foundations, the book offers most useful practical advice for OD scholars and practitioners alike. Pertinence and comprehensiveness of the volume hold promise to make it an OD classic right from the start!
Dr. Bernd Schmid
CEO isb GmbH,Germany author, Systemische Organisationsentwicklung.
Companies, their cultures, their markets and the people involved are so dramatically different, that developmental change cannot be copied or implemented from a template. Organization development needs to emerge from the real engagement of organizational members. This book describes the necessary processes for people who are willing to take on the challenge of transformational change, in a way that maintains the dignity of the human spirit.
Andreas Werr
Professor of Management Director of the Center for HRM and Knowledge Work Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden
Dialogic OD provides a central resource for students interested in how to intervene in organizations based on a social-constructivist understanding and for change agents looking for an opportunity to reflect on their practice and expand their conceptual and practical toolbox to deal with the challenges of contemporary organizations.
S. Ramnarayan, Ph.D.
Clinical Professor of Organizational Behavior Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, India
Dialogic Organization Development is a truly pioneering work that puts the focus back on the heart of OD – the spirit of inquiry. It is widely recognized that organizations today operate in an environment that is referred to as VUCA – volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. This edited volume is, therefore very timely because there is increasing need for stimulating alternative or generative images, shaping how people think about things, and coming to terms with adaptive problems that involve changing mindsets.
David Coghlan
Trinity College, Dublin Ireland Editor of Fundamentals of Organization Development, Ireland
Dialogic Organization Development is influencing how we understand and practice OD. Now it can influence how we can design and conduct OD research. This book provides the framework for retrieving core OD values of researching with people rather than researching on or about them.
Sushma Sharma
Founder and CEO, Resonate Consulting Past President, Indian Society for Applied Behavioral Sciences
The shift from Diagnostic to Dialogic OD reveals the essence of organization development. This book makes it easy to understand and apply and creates the possibility of combining many new approaches. I found it enriching, provocative, and challenging. I fully resonated with the theory and practice of this approach and endorse it completely.
Kohei (Ken) Nishikawa
Professor Konan University Graduate School of Accountancy Co-Director, OD Association of Japan
Dialogic OD, a mindset about organizational change conceptualized by the two editors of this book, provides a beacon to new directions and possibilities in the field of Organization Development and Change. This is an excellent book for students of OD, experienced consultants, change leaders, and anyone working to improve organizations based on democratic, humanistic and collaborative inquiry values.
