Abstract
This article outlines the different threads in the dialogic perceptions on learning, principally published in Management Learning journal, and identifies common assumptions underpinning them. It proceeds to contextualize them methodologically and conceptually to problematize dialogic lenses on learning – rather than to critique them. It claims that shunning the instances of non-dialogic learning or overlooking the research contexts in which dialogic inquiry is not expedient risks favouring certain societal and organizational discourses at the expense of others, as well as missing out on lessons which otherwise could have been learned. It concludes with an outline of a non-dialogic perspective on management learning built on existing contributions, with a view to galvanize the conversation ongoing in this journal on positionality of any pre-configured research lenses on learning. Finally, it considers the potential risks and consequences of failing to adjust one’s research accessory in accordance with one’s object of study.
Introduction
Imagine an academic teacher explaining the meaning of a concept to a group of research students who are expected to make sense of it, and variously employ to it as lenses to better understand the findings of their empirical project. Each of them learns something, but the exact ‘meaning’ of what they learned does not fully overlap neither with what others have learned nor with the content communicated by the teacher: After all the teacher only explained the main notion, but left the task of conceptualizing their data to the students. Assuming our teacher is receptive to other ideas, their understanding of the notion in question may be enriched by the interpretations emerging from the students’ conceptualizations. Inasmuch, as we may be tempted to normalize such a learning and perceive it as just what ‘real learning should be about’, we must admit that such a procedure is not free from a strong assumption: Communicated and received contents do not overlap and are not being intended to do so. Those conversational exchanges are productive in a sense that they have a capacity to transform the learner (and potentially teacher as well) rather than just render them anodyne conduits to a learned content. This dialogic premise behind the dominant body of scholarly work on management learning deserves a closer scrutiny, which will be undertaken in this short article. The point is not to query whether non-dialogic learning is feasible – we know that it is – but rather to consider whether through (by and large) shunning the instances of non-dialogic learning, as well as often overlooking the research contexts in which dialogic inquiry is not expedient, we may inadvertently favour certain societal and organizational discourses at the expense of others, and whether there are lessons about (management) learning which we may fail to learn as a result.
In line with the scope of this Special Issue to critically review topics that have figured prominently in the journal, principally articles published in Management Learning will be taken into consideration. To render intelligible the broader discussion ongoing in the field, the body of work published in other publication outlets will be occasionally referred to.
Incarnations of dialogue
While not intended as an exhaustive review of dialogic perspectives on learning, the following broad outline of dialogue’s role in learning, as it is often portrayed in Management Learning journal and beyond, can be given: (1) Dialogue may be perceived as an overall blueprint for organizing and learning; (2) dialogue may be seen as a methodological proposition enabling to understand some aspect of learning and, finally, (3) dialogue can be perceived as a solution to a certain, specific problem with learning. 1
Learning in organizations is often portrayed in line with the broader perspective on dialogicity in organizations: ‘Stuff’ the latter are made of is considered to be ‘polyvocal’ (Buchanan and Dawson, 2007), ‘multi-authored’ (Tsoukas and Chia, 2002) and ‘polyphonic’ (Gergen and Whitney, 1996; Hazen, 1993), and therefore organizations emerge from interactions between actors (Boje et al., 1996), hence meaningful engagement with them must entail capacity to interpret a variety of conversations (Rosenau, 1992) and dialogues (Morson and Emerson, 1990), which they are imbued with. In this context, the body of work published in Management Learning, for example, renders learning can be semantically transformative – it has to be, because since the environments we exist in are soaked in ‘unprecedented and discontinuous change’ (Bosma et al., 2016: 14), as well as they are pluralist and processual (Chia and Morgan, 1996), and we ‘find ourselves immersed in a world in which events have a tendency to unfold and overtake us in unforeseeable and novel ways that defy comprehension’ (Bosma et al., 2016: 14), what we know and how we know is constantly challenged, hence learning (and indeed organizing) is an ‘ongoing accomplishment’ (Hernes and Irgens, 2013: 259). In the context of management learning, this seemingly renders ‘radical learning’ necessary: that is, one in which ‘interventions in dialogue open up semantic spaces whereby new terms are coined and old ones broken up’ to ‘give expression to [. . .] new phenomena observed’, and therefore it is the existing ‘vagueness’ and ‘equivocality’ which make ‘improvisatory’ character of a dialogue a suitable form of communication (Hernes and Irgens, 2013: 14). Managing organizations in this context must be dialogic as well, because ‘search for principles’ is in vain, as things happen through listening and talking, creating, shaping and sharing meaning (Pye, 1995: 445). Meanings unfold in and through acts of mutual exchange: It is only at the end of the exchange that meaning is decided, never at the outset (Pye, 1995: 447). Anything that happens in organization – for example strategy-making – is essentially about ‘dialogue and doing’ (p. 457), and eventually learning from the outcomes of what was done and said (p. 461). In sum, dialogic learning is desired because it is both sufficiently undecided and (advantageously) precarious to enable the ever-changing social and organizational worlds to be knowable and organizations manageable and possible to learn within and about. In other words, the dialogic model of learning in organizations adheres to a certain concept of the world surrounding them, often invoked in Management Learning journal: Learning has to happen through a dialogue, because the world is replete with it.
Scholarly work published in Management Learning perceives dialogue as a methodological proposition emphasizing that learning and production of knowledge happen through relational (Abma, 2003) and collective practices (Antonacopoulou, 2009). Therefore, any specific frame for capturing these processes for analysis to better understand them must be sensitive enough to render tangible this ‘interpenetration’ between two sides of the dialogue (MacIntosh et al., 2012). For example, drawing on Shotter’s (2010) notion of a ‘situated dialogic action research’, Mason (2012) explains (in the context of market research) how new meanings and understandings can be captured in the dialogue between researching-practitioner and practising-researcher. In a related vein, MacIntosh et al. (2012) proposed to dissolve the binary of researcher-practitioner and instead explore exchanges between them as a meaningful dialogue between two partners ‘practicing theory’ (p. 375) in different ways. Such sentiments are, first and foremost, questions of methodological framing enabling to adjust one’s methodological toolset to make it better disposed towards grappling with certain phenomena (rather than being e.g. mere questions of analysing the findings), because, for instance, for MacIntosh et al. (2012), ‘viewing the process in this way’ enables to go beyond the binary of knowing and practising, which in authors’ view are ‘co-constitutive’ (p. 373). Dialogic view therefore feeds into the methodological frames used in the research process.
Finally, and typically – at least on in the context of learning, as expressed in numerous contributions published in Management Learning journal – dialogism is construed as an answer or solution to a certain problem. Here, for example, individual and organizational learning can open a dialogic relationality of conversational spaces between actors engaging in experiential learning (Baker et al., 2005). Dialogue may be seen as a vehicle for supporting research process while being advantageous to those partaking in it, as it enables the latter self-reflexivity and learning (Corlett, 2012). Dialogic conversation may offer an opportunity for managers stuck in the silence to productively engage in reflection-on-action (Holton and Grandy, 2016). Zooming on into a dialogue – in this case between educators and students – may help unearth the tensions and, potentially, overcome them (Iszatt-White et al., 2017). Dialogue may allow actors to cross the gulf between theory and practice by providing a space for support, but also for exchange and experimentation (Marcos and Denyer, 2012). More broadly, dialogue is seen as an enabler of learning in organizations (Mazutis and Slawinski, 2008), helps to deal with an epistemic uncertainty (Mengis et al., 2018), may facilitate expanding knowledge through intersubjective transformation (Raelin, 2008) and, crucially in the context of learning, it creates space for meaning-making and critique (Trott, 2013). Therefore, dialogue is perceived as a feasible tool as much as a desired outcome of learning (as also argued by the author of the current article (Izak, 2013b; Izak, 2016).
Dialogue in context
In its varied guises, a dialogic perspective on organizations and learning therefore emphasizes plurality of voices and reciprocity of dynamic interaction between actors. In this section, a wider landscape of discussion will be invoked, largely emerging from outside of the Management Learning corpus, to be enable positioning the latter within the broader perspective. Thus, using the framework developed elsewhere (Izak et al., 2022), three tenets for dialogic learning can be identified: It is the one which happens in a pluralist context (many voices are present), it is reciprocal (two, or more, sides of the learning process mutually contribute meaningful content) as well as it is liquid, in a sense that the learning is perceived as a process-in-the-making, never quite possible to contain, a process that is ‘becoming’ (Clegg et al., 2005).
Outlining these common threads in dialogic learning is intended as a springboard to denaturalizing them (in the next section), rather than as a discovery: Both methodological and conceptual building blocks of dialogic learning have been long established. Dialogically imagined learning is well known as a journey towards understanding, which typically unfolds in an abundant companionship of other voices actively partaking in the process of a meaningful exchange – or ad extremis happens through an exchange between different perspectives existing within one individual mind, allowing itself to reflect on one’s own thought paradigm and explore it, as in a double-loop learning context (Argyris, 1977). What makes this process meaningful is the difference between the meaning present at the outset of the communication (e.g. pronounced by the speaker) and the one received and interpreted (i.e. by the listener; Lotman, 1988). In other words, the fact that the interpretation meaningfully contributes to the act of learning is at play, which entails that interpretation – and creating space for it – is rendered sine qua non conditions to learn that way. Thus, learning happens through meaningful exchange between different views and/or persons, enabled by the relaxation of inflexible patterns of sensemaking (Pratt, 2000) providing ultimate openness and sheer possibility (Giroux, 1997) to learn, often through and by others (Lave and Wenger, 1991). In dialogism both sides of the equation matter, as engaging with pronunciations made by both dictates the extent of meaningfulness of the learning process (Deleuze, 1994). As in the classic Bakhtinian dichotomy, understanding is always active and premised upon responsivity which creates the ground for a dialogue to emerge; the exposure to ‘alien’ discourses is necessary for meaningful communication (Bakhtin, 1981).
How can therefore an organization, or some aspect thereof, be feasibly perceived beyond dialogic lenses? The answer is perhaps blindingly obvious, the alternative to dialogicity being the ‘reproduction of that which is already given’: a monologic discourse (Bakhtin, 1981: 281). In the latter, potentially, the meaning, rather than being always precarious and undecided (Serres, 1982), solidifies (Izak et al., 2022).
Although such a monologic concept of learning, in which the relationship between sender and receiver turns into the ‘harmony of similarities’ (Brown, 2002: 6), may be the one we tend to eschew, whether as a blueprint for what learning should be, a methodological proposition for understanding it, or as an espoused solution to a certain problem, it, of course, is, again, old news. Suffice to remind us of a concept of learning described by St Augustine, and famously evoked by Wittgenstein (2009 [1953]) at the start of Philosophical Investigations to exemplify one manner in which a language game can be played: Here the meanings of words are learned by an explicit, ostensive indication to objects which correspond to them, so that any equivocality regarding what is meant is eliminated at the outset. This may be considered as a genre of a single-loop learning, in which not only the whole learning process takes place within one single paradigm (Argyris, 1977), but also any semantic oscillation and freedom of interpretation are paradigmatically limited.
Unappealing as such a perception on learning may be in the context of a privileged and dominant dialogic perspective on what organizations do and what sustains them (Izak et al., 2022), it nevertheless deserves reflection as a feasible alternative to understanding learning in organizational context – an alternative perhaps too often occluded or ignored – as long as it may be considered a methodologically viable one and as long as there are problems, which may conceivably be tackled by employing it. I would argue that – on both accounts – it may indeed.
First, instances of non-dialogic learning in organizations abound. In fact, they may dominate in those situations in which the default communicational mode is speaking at, rather than with people, relaying the message rather than engaging in interpreting it and expecting the learner to comply with the speaker’s intended meaning. Hardly a novelty, not only taking into account those organizational contexts in which compliance and equivocality must be eliminated by the sheer strength of design (think of a private receiving an order in the army, a nurse being instructed by the surgeon in the operating theatre or a dictator imposing their will on their subjects in an authoritarian country), but also those in which imposition of meanings may be more subtly inscribed into the logic of an organizational framework (e.g. that of translation services in an international institution, see: Izak, 2013b). It stands to reason that any framework in which instruction and expertise play a role, indeed any framework in which the lineaments of bureaucracy and/or authoritarianism linger (or are cherished), is, or may be, a breeding ground for non-dialogic learning. An example, which may resonate with those who endured the travails of academic publishing, may be the editorial process in certain peer-reviewed academic journals, which can be experienced by the unfortunate actors as an exercise in imposition of a pre-established content imagined by the reviewers, rather than as a supportive exchange of ideas or ‘a journey’ (see e.g. Grosu-Rădulescu, 2022). That equivocation is eschewed and that meanings can be solidified before they are conveyed, as well as that compliance with them is firmly expected, may also be encountered by teachers at any level of education (certainly, university education being included among them): It suffices to recall various ‘guardians of meaning’ profusely present in that context, including syllabuses capturing learning outcomes, marking grids and any other pre-evaluated, pre-existing rigid contents. While it is possible to claim that such organizational scripts (memos, strategies and other) are conversation-starters in the process of communication involving human and non-human actors on a par (Ashcraft et al., 2009), this may not quite be the experience of those ever attempting to amend or bypass them. Others, who, for example, might have dabbed in providing services of commercial consulting, may recognize not only the unforgiving nature of various pre-agreed project scope documents, but also oftentimes a one-way nature of communication which unfolds in such contexts (after all ‘client is always right’). It stands to reason that rationale for attempting to understand such instances of learning through dialogic lenses is debatable at best.
If these problems were to be tackled from the dialogic stance, would we not have missed out on a methodological opportunity to calibrate our research lenses from the outset so that tenets of monologicity are ‘allowed in’? If, in some instances, meanings can be pre-decided, conversations not ongoing, feigned, or if all pronunciations made by one of the sides of learning fall to deaf ears – in other words: if only one side is exclusively or pre-dominantly enabled to shape the content of the conversation – should it not make us more sensitive from the start to unilaterality (instead of reciprocity) and solidity (instead of liquidity) of learning and meanings conveyed in this process? Paying closer attention to monologic lineaments of how we learn (and potentially teach) is certainly methodologically feasible – the main requirement being shedding off the (sometimes) redundant conception that in the process of learning we necessarily discover new places and get somewhere we haven’t yet been to. Being keenly sensitive – and adjusting one’s methodological and analytical toolsets accordingly – to instances of silenced or lacking responses and stark power differentials in the context of learning would be a good start towards putting on the non-dialogical research lenses.
If your only tool is a hammer . . .
To study dialogue in the context of learning and to perceive learning as a dialogue are two different things. The pragmatic lesson is to avoid confusing them. Better yet, to ensure that our analytical accessories facilitate achieving better understanding of the object studied instead of occluding it. Taking an academic teaching as an example: Does perceiving a particular instance of a student learning a new concept as an inherently dialogic process – in which meanings are co-shaped and in which those at the outset can justifiably be seen, and expected to be seen, as different, enriched or shifted – help to explain how the concept was learned? Obviously, ‘tis all in the context. Approaching the act of student learning dialogically may be fully warranted if the framework for learning enables and encourages a dialogue. A PhD candidate in the process of developing their project through a series of meetings and other interactions with a well-informed and engaged scholar may reasonably be expected to achieve just that: shift of understanding, resulting from a (potentially mutually) enriching journey towards it. To explore this re-shaping, to zoom in on the changed position of actors partaking in it and to gauge the vibrancy and value of the interaction between those parties are, or can be, precisely the analytical focus needed to understand this learning process. On a rather different note, the learning environment encompassing several hundred research students enrolled on a module allegedly enabling them to develop a deep understanding of the concept of ‘research’ through several sparse, long, condensed and collective interactions with a tutor is more feasibly grasped when the veneer of dialogue – often superficially present in such discourses, for example for the sake of student recruitment – is dismissed, and attention is given to how unilaterality of knowledge-passing was achieved. How and to which extent have the students memorized the concepts taught to them? Have they included them in their projects? Can they repeat what they have learned? That those questions may be variously answered in each particular case is obvious, as should be the fact that they are reasonable questions to ask given the context for learning delineated in this example.
Naturally, as mentioned above, there also exist broader organizational milieus eschewing dialogue through imposing rules precluding it, as well as those which ensure that space for an interpretation is eliminated already at the stage of employee recruitment (Izak, 2013a) and, therefore, understanding of learning in those organizations is – I posit – unlikely to be enriched by starting the research from a dialogic premise.
It is not to claim that learning situations are typically as clearcut, or that one research lenses preclude another (cf. Izak et al., 2022). Rather, it is to observe the possibility that in those learning contexts in which dialogue does not appear to be feasible – for example due to contextual factors stifling it, or express or tacit rules obstructing it – exploring them dialogically risks that we will fail to learn something crucial about learning. Or worse: that researchers may become inadvertently complicit in the act of co-creation of the said dialogic veneer. 2
In the context of this Special Issue, I would like to propose that such a potentiality conveys a message: Much is to be gained should future work developed in Management Learning journal consider whether dialogic lenses are feasible in each particular case, learning problem or empirical setting, and use them more judiciously and in a self-reflexive manner. The main benefit of such an approach, as alluded above, consists in better aligning one’s own analytical apparatus to phenomena being observed and thus allowing oneself to perceive and comprehend them in all their richness.
Conclusion
A non-dialogic perspective on learning thus involves calibration of a methodological toolset to enable for unilaterality and solidity of learning to be discerned in alignment with increased sensitivity to topics, phenomena and instances of learning in which dialogue is (hardly or) not present, beyond pretension. By no means is this perspective on learning argued to be new, but this intervention is intended to posit that far too rarely is its obvious feasibility appreciated. Neither is monologic perspective on learning intended to replace the dialogic one. Quite the opposite: For the benefit of future research intended to be published in this journal, the purpose here was to galvanize – in a nomen omen dialogic fashion – the conversation in Management Learning on the dialogue’s positionality, and arguably on the dialogue’s default position in a vast body of research on learning.
