The
Use of Words:
Improving Enterprises
by Improving their Conversations
Abstract
Action research usually takes place as some kind of collaboration between theorists and practitioners. The theorists’ anchoring in practice is regarded as a kind of guarantee that the theoretical work, which is performed by means of words, will work in practice. In this article it is argued that practitioners, being users of language, may very well be victims of their own inadequate theorising in ways which their own understanding of themselves as practitioners make them blind to see. Thus, one crucial task for action research is to help the practitioners using words in ways which are more useful to themselves. In this chapter an action research strategy generated from this general point is presented, and illustrated by exploring an example of using dialogue conference and development organisation as means of enterprise development by means of words.
Introductory words
The action
research approach to be presented in this article has its antecedents in the
tradition of the Tavistock Institute in
On the relationship between theorists and practitioners.
The action research dialogue takes place not in the «language game» (Wittgenstein 1977) of the researchers, nor in that of the practitioners. Rather the perspectives and the knowledge of the researchers to a very large extent have been introduced and ‘put into use’ through the researchers entering into the language game of the practitioners.
The researchers’ perspective and knowledge have largely been generated within the language games of the scientific community. When put into practice, they have to be expressed in new ways which are appropriate within the language game of the practitioners. This is not simply a question of ‘simplifying’ or ‘popularising’. It also requires the linguistic competence to recreate the researcher’s knowledge in a way which ‘makes it work at work’ - that is, in a way that make it useful to the practitioners.
The relationship between researchers and practitioners are, however, characterised not only by the ability of the researchers to enter into the language games of the practitioners. For the knowledge necessary for action is distributed among both researchers and practitioners, and also between different groups of practitioners. Action researchers have a kind of additional knowledge which can be considered as a supplementary, not a superior kind of knowledge. Thus, we will find practitioners who have experienced that they themselves may benefit from entering into the language games of the researchers, thereby broadening their perspectives and enriching their vocabulary to the benefit of their own discourses and actions.
In
We may often observe that the same words are used to describe quite different events which take place at different times, at different places, so that the particularity of each event tends to disappear - or never to come to the fore. One might even say that our ability to sustain a scientific discourse may owe more to the sameness of the words we use than the sameness of the phenomena we are talking (and writing) about. There is a levelling force of language, and, as we know, the meaning of words is not a totally (END OF P. 209) inherent property of the words themselves. The meaning is also dependent on the use of the words, in its particular context. Thus, the words used within any particular context have a meaning which is no longer quite the same when these words are reproduced out of context. So even though people in different situations make use of identical words they do not refer to identical situations or imply identical meanings. The danger of levelling these real differences increases when we reproduce these words out of context, for example in writing.
This kind of ‘transformation’ is often regarded as the path from practice to theory. But this does not mean to say that the practitioner’s local, oral discourse is the practical one, while the researchers written discourse is the theoretical one. We often think that the tendency of making written presentations too general is a particular scientific ‘disease’. It is perhaps noteworthy here to remember that Thomas Mann, a master in presenting subtle details, makes his narrator in Doctor Faustus, Dr. Zeitblom, complain that he finds language too general to present real individual characters, suggesting that even when writing a novel where the author has the freedom to write as s/he would like, the author has to struggle with what seems to be the inherent tendency of language towards generalities.
Thus, it might seem that the activity of writing has this inherent tendency towards generalisation, while the spoken word - the ‘living word’ - is inherently specific and anchored in the practical. This is indeed a too hasty conclusion. The point is rather that the process of writing makes it particularly clear to us that when the words used are not about that practical context within which the linguistic expressions are made, the meaning of the words becomes ‘theoretical’. In other words, the meaning of the words used derives from some other phenomenon than the practical context in which the words are being used. The meaning is so to speak created ‘out of context’. In contrast, a language game which takes place within the very same practical situation as that language game is about, gains - by dint of the very interplay between the actors use of words and the practical circumstances - a kind of specificity which a language game ‘out of context’ is not capable. In this sense, there seems to be a kind of inherent force towards generality - towards theory - in writing, in the written word.
However, performing language games ‘out of context’ is not a phenomenon which is limited to the written word. There are lots and lots of examples of oral language games whose topic is not about and does not include the local, practical situation of those performing the language game. Probably most of the language games in which we participate, are more or less ‘out of context’ in the sense that what we talk about is very often neither the practical situation nor the location within which our discussion takes place. In this sense the use of language ‘out of context’ is a kind of theoretical use of language, and from this point of view we see that performing of ‘theoretical’ discourses is by no means a business only of theoreticians or scientists. Practitioners will over and over again find themselves in a situation where they in practice perform a ‘theoretical’ kind of discourse, even though their theoretical understanding of themselves as practitioners, makes them blind too see this (theoretical) point.
From these considerations, we find that the distinction between theorists and practitioners do not necessarily follow the distinction between theory and practice (cf. Kemmis 2000 <in this volume>). Therefore, rather than asking what kind of people perform the language game, we should ask what kind of language game is being played. As I will try to make clear by describing our work, it is an important part of our competence as action researchers always to be very attentive to what kind of language game is taking place, since what we in practice do is to act with words or intervene with words. Thus, we have to be attentive not only to how meaning is created by the use of words (cf. Boden 1994, Grant et. al. 1998); we also have to be very attentive to how meanings may be changed by using words in another ways - playing language games otherwise.
On the Scandinavian
context
The historical-institutional context of our research is of course
quite specific for
Perhaps most important is that this action approach from the very beginning in the sixties to this day have been carried out in some kind of political-institutional co-operation with the two main parties of working life. In 1983 these two parties signed an Agreement on Enterprise Development and founded an institution to support local development work in the enterprises (cf. Gustavsen 1985). The general objective of this Agreement was to help the enterprises in their effort to create increased value added by means of broad participation from the employees in development work. This overall objective may be regarded as a combination of two purposes: increasing both the efficiency and the conditions of participative democracy within the enterprises (cf. Pålshaugen1988).
It is important to underline that this general objective is to be carried out in practice in accordance with the local conditions at each particular enterprise. (END OF P. 210)The research approach to be presented in this article has for decades been devoted to collaborating with enterprises who work with enterprise development within this institutional framework. Generally speaking our research task may be described as one of contributing to the further development of this kind of democratic working life reforms, both on the level of the general political- institutional framework and - in particular - on the level of the enterprises, by developing both theoretical concepts and practical means and methods to be applied in enterprise development processes (Gustavsen 1998, Engelstad 1996). This means that from the very beginning, we have to bridge our theories with the practice of the enterprises, if there is to be any action research project. As will be seen from the example to follow, this does however not mean that our contribution is simply to ‘fill in holes’ or to create quick solutions to their immediate problems. Rather, the challenge to us is to make the enterprise’s own discourse - or language games - shift from a theoretical one to a practical one, so that they become able to act more in accordance with their real, practical situation.
Our initial words: A surprise to the enterprise
Our collaboration with an engineering enterprise –a producer of special fittings for utility vehicles like ambulances, buses, trams, trains and ferries—will illustrate our argument in this chapter. The enterprise exports some . 35% of its production, and the number of employees is a bit more than 100. We were contacted by this enterprise in connection with their efforts to attend to the Agreement on Enterprise Development. The situation was presented to us as follows: As part of a few separate enterprise development projects, the engineering enterprise over the last few years had co-operated with a consulting firm on quality improvements. The consulting firm had organised a process of minute mapping of all kind of needs for improvements: work environment problems, technical problems, productivity problems, organisational problems and so on. This process had been organised sequentially, in similar ways for all the participating work groups and organisational units, who worked in parallel: Firstly, discussions of what are the problems, then making priorities and at last writing down each problem, suggesting how it might be solved, who should be responsible and what should be the time limits. In short, a seemingly very practically oriented process. Our first comment was that, while this process literally made a good show on paper, it was nevertheless a very ‘theoretical’ approach to practical problem-solving.
Though a bit surprised by our comment, the people at the enterprise (both the management an the union) assured us that what we said was in accordance with the experience, because they really did not know what to do with the huge pile of improvement tasks. Thus, they were eager to get some more straightforward practical advice. Instead, we brought them some theoretical concepts which help reorganise their own understanding of the practical situation. We introduced the distinction between on the one hand operational tasks - which comprise all the kinds of daily work carried out in the enterprise’s chain of value creation; and on the other hand what we have labelled the development tasks - which are the tasks which have to carried out to improve the conditions for performing the operational tasks. Expressed in their own words this distinction was known as one between ‘daily work’ and ‘project work’, or between ‘ordinary tasks’ and ‘extra-ordinary’ tasks. Thus, in a certain sense this distinction was not new to them, it just reminded them of a perspective they knew rather well.
Our next move was also one of reminding. We emphasised that the work with the development tasks has to be organised just as carefully and effectively as the operational tasks. Of course they in principle also knew this, but it was so to speak just a theoretical knowledge, one with very few practical consequences. Thus, our real contribution was first to introduce the distinction of development tasks in contrast to operational tasks, and from there put on the agenda the question of how to organise in practice the work with the development tasks. In this way the distinction became of highly practical interest to the enterprise. Our contribution consists in reminding the actors at the enterprise of a knowledge they to a great extent already have, and by means of our dialogue with them we try to make them take the more concrete, practical consequences of their own knowledge. In other words, we try to help them making their own discourse more practically relevant.
Having reached this stage, the enterprise still wanted us to simply tell them the answer: In what way should the practical work with development tasks be organised? As will be recognised by the reader, this question is formulated on the presupposition that the relation between us and them is one of the classical constellation between the laymen and the expert. Thus, we have to make clear that this presupposition - or this theoretical assumption - is not quite applicable to our relationship with them. Since this is a kind of problem that very often occur in the discussions between representatives of research and enterprises, I will comment upon them in a more general manner, before returning to this engineering enterprise in particular.
On the use of experts
We would emphasise that with regard to the problems of their
enterprise and the local conditions for coping with them, the people at the
enterprise are the real (END OF P. 211) ‘experts’. Of course, each kind
of employee and each kind of manager is to be regarded expert only on parts of the local whole, normally
those parts which are made up by the ‘area’ of their daily work tasks. As we
(and they) very well know, these tasks are interrelated and interconnected in
more or less clearly surveyable ways. We can obtain a general image of this
interconnectedness by looking at the organisational
structure of the enterprise. We know that the way problems are defined and
solutions attempted in one particular workplace, will have consequences on how
problems are defined and coped with in the various adjoining workplaces. And
very often these problem-definitions and solutions are either too narrow, or
various kinds of interconnectedness are overlooked, disagreements occur, which
keep on living as ‘theoretical controversies’ and the practical solutions do not occur. In short, the people working
at an enterprise may very well be considered experts on their own enterprise as
a ‘sum’ or totality of practical
entities. However, they are not (necessarily) to be considered experts on their
own enterprise as a theoretical
entity, that is, as a reality to be simulated in the medium of language.
Here we enter the scene as experts. Not that we claim to master a coherent theoretical picture of the enterprise in question. But from our general knowledge of organisational structures, socio-technical systems, language and dialogues, we are experts on how to organise the discourse between the members of this enterprise organisation, in ways which make the members themselves able to construct the kind of linguistic representations which are suitable to the practical problems they are into. That is, we reorganise their (own) discourse in ways which makes their own use of words more useful for themselves. The approach, methods or techniques we apply will of course vary somewhat, but to give a general impression on how we proceed, I will briefly present one of the main elements in our approach of reorganising discourses within organisations, a kind of event - and a kind of intervention - we have labelled dialogue conference.
Dialogue conference:
Reorganising the relationship between word and deed
As indicated by its name, this is a conference essentially made up of dialogues. The dialogues are performed by the people from the enterprise, but we -the researchers- are the ones who organise the dialogues in the manner(s) particular to this kind of conference(s). Metaphorically speaking we function as the stage director, while the participants from the enterprise serve as the actors. Another way to put it is to say that they have the main responsibility for the content of the conference, while the form is our main responsibility. As for the form, a dialogue conference may be ( and actually have been) organised in many ways. The general point is that it is organised in ways which creates new kinds of discussions, or new kinds of language games - new compared to the conventional way of performing discussions and proceeding in meetings in the daily run of the enterprise, within its ordinary structure and forums for talk. In this sense the organising of a dialogue conference is an essential contribution to the efforts of reorganising the enterprise’s discourse. Before presenting some examples extracted from the running of certain dialogue conferences, I will briefly present two general, important points and on this basis sketch a model of its general form.
The point of the departure is the overall organisational structure of the enterprise. This structure reflects the way the work with the totality of operational tasks is organised. Generally, this organisational structure is reflected also in the structure of the discourses that takes place within the enterprise, both the formal and the informal ones. If we, for analytical reasons, imagine the total amount of discourses, or the discourse formation of an enterprise, we will easily recognise the picture: The informal discourses are mostly limited to the departments one works within and the colleagues with whom one works; the formal ones are limited to a rather restricted number of forums for management and co-operation on different levels. The very existence of this rather stable, conventional discourse formation is one of the reasons why the viewpoints of the different groups of actors within an enterprise so often is quite foreseeable, at least on the general level. The one main general purpose of a dialogue conference is to create dialogues with new and different structure(s), to create new viewpoints and new kinds of insight which hardly is allowed/possible within the limitations of the conventional discourse formation of enterprises.
The other general purpose of a dialogue conference is to enhance the ability - or the competence - of all (kinds of) participants from the enterprise to become more aware of the various kinds of relationship(s) between word and deed. When we talk, and when we discuss with each other, we use words to simulate reality. When discussing problems and tasks to be performed in an enterprise, we necessarily have to simulate action(s). And, as we know, the bridge between what is said and what is (afterwards) done is often very fragile, and sometimes there is no bridge at all. In principle this is a very simple point, and in principle there should be no problem to be aware of the difference between word and deed. However, in practice - that is, in the practice of discussions - this distinction very often is blurred in a way the participants of the discussion do not necessarily notice themselves.
A very common example is lack of precise reference when using the
grammatical term ‘we’: «We have to …»; «What we must do, is….»; «We will do
this..» and so on. Very often, the one who (END OF P. 212) utters the
words «we shall do» do not belong to the group of people who in practice will have to be the ‘doers’.
The use of the term «we» is legitimated by the speakers imaginary identification with the ‘doers’, not by him-/herself
actually being one of the them. This reminds us that not only nations, but also
enterprises, in a certain sense have to be regarded as (and treated as) a kind
of ‘imagined communities’ (
In a dialogue conference, most of the participants energy and most of the time are devoted to discussions in groups. Usually, a dialogue conference will be made up of 3 -5 sessions, each consisting of parallel group discussions with subsequent plenary sessions. The plenary sessions after each group discussion mainly consist of short reports from the group discussions, in order to inform the totality of participants of the main results from the proceedings in groups. The time spent in groups is normally 1 ½ - 2 hours, the plenary sessions ½ - ¾ of an hour, an the whole conference takes place in the course of 1 or 2 days. To construct a dialogue conference within these frames and the above mentioned general premises, we as (stage) directors have two main means: The issuing of topics to be discussed in groups, and the composition of the groups to discuss them. The challenge we are confronted is to create the optimal combination of topic for discussion and group composition in each session, and to create the most productive or creative constellation of various kinds of sessions, both according to the specific, local conditions/situation of the enterprise(s) we in each particular collaborate with.
Of course, in practice any such conference has to be constructed in
collaboration with the enterprise and some kind of representative selection of
those who are going to be the participants - the actors - of the conference.
Even though the form of the
conference is mainly our responsibility, this very form above all has to take
shape on the conditions of the specific content,
which is provided us by the enterprise. In
The three first sessions
of a dialogue conference
In the first session the topic of the group discussion was simply: «What do you consider respectively the biggest problems and the greatest potential of improvements at our enterprise?» As an introduction to this group discussion a video was shown, in which a number of the enterprise’s main customers openly presented their view on the enterprise’s advantages and shortages, to overcome the internal perspectives which hitherto had prevailed the discussion and mapping of problems. The principle of group composition applied to the discussion of this topic we have labelled one of ‘homogeneity’. This means that each group is composed of people which have approximately the same kind of job, as regards both kind of skills, kind of workplace, department, level etc. In this way the homogeneity within each group is maximised, but also the heterogeneity between the groups.
This principle of group composition - which is openly presented to the participants - is applied to make each group express openly both their insights and their prejudices on the topic under discussion. Whatever they may think of themselves, no particular group has neither total insight nor total overview. This fact becomes rather clear to everybody when the results from the group discussions are presented in the plenary session. Both to managers and workers, to salesman and foremen, this kind of group-based ‘self-exposition’ - of which the ordinary discourse formation at the enterprise gives no opportunity - serves as a kind of lesson in acknowledging both the relevance and the limitations of one’s own view on the enterprise as a whole.
In the next session, the topic was to analyse the various kinds of causes of the different problems. In the discussion of this topic, the groups were composed in a way which by and large reflected the organisational structure of the work organisation, to ensure that each group was composed of people with competence and insight based on their work experience from the main parts of the enterprise as a whole (both departments and levels). However, to avoid the discussions and analyses of causes only following the well-known tracks of the ordinary discourse formation, each group was composed in a way which made workers and management from the same department never meet in the same group. In this way both workers and management get an opportunity to discuss (mostly) well-known matters/problems from certain new views. They can challenge each other in new ways which may stimulate more creative thinking in analysing chains of causes. In addition to this, we provided the groups with a simple four-square scheme to sort out different kinds of problems according to their (END OF P. 213) ‘location’ in the work organisation. This served as a quite effective help to be aware of the organisational dimensions of any problem, a dimension which is easily overlooked in favour of the technical and personal aspects which often tends to dominate discussions of these kinds.
Not surprisingly, the third session is devoted to discuss the topic of how to cope with and solve the problems which are given priority, that is, which are the development tasks to work with after the conference. In this session the principle of group composition normally is some variant of making each group follow the structure of the line organisation, since the work with development tasks are to be carried out in ways which are in accordance with the requirements of the daily performance of the operative tasks. The performance of the operative tasks formally is the responsibility of the line managers, who therefore have to participate in the discussions also on what development tasks which ought to de allocated resources to work with. If, as in this case, this discussion takes place at the second day of the conference, we - as conference designers - usually have had a dialogue with management and the union in the evening the day before, after the closure of the two first sessions. This we do to give both us and them a more thorough view of those aspects of the total situation of the enterprise and its employees which have a particular significance for future work with development tasks.
More surprisingly, perhaps, is it that the group discussions in the fourth and last session of the dialogue conference is not devoted to a scheduling of the practical work with the prioritised development tasks, like making decisions on what to be done, who shall do it and when should it be done. Rightly, these discussions do focus on how to work with the development tasks (in practice) after the conference, and the group composition also this time in one way or another are organised in accordance with the line organisation, so in principle there are no hindrances to make the groups work out these kind of decisions. We do not invite them to do engage in such practical work because of earlier, not too good experiences when we have tried this, and, following these experiences, from our reflections on what kind of language game this fourth session is, in comparison with the three preceding ones. I shall present a brief version of these reflections.
What kind of language games is organised at a dialogue conference?
The three first group discussions may all of them be considered as various kind of a ‘simulation game’. The organisational reality of the enterprise is simulated in the medium of language, and these simulations, their content and the quality of this content, will vary with who the simulators are, that is, who are the participants of the discussion. As has been noticed, the progression throughout the sessions is conceptualised and organised in a way which also should produce a progression in the quality of the simulations. That is, the linguistic representations of reality should become more and more apt, or realistic. What is very important to notice, is that all the three first group discussions have had the character of simulating this and that piece of reality, which means that they have served to create a kind of diagnosis of this and that situation or event. Insofar as the participants have succeeded in creating or constructing better diagnoses, better linguistic simulations, these new and better simulations mainly serve to substitute the older, less appropriate ones.
So far, so good. However, when the participants in the fourth session at last are confronted with the question or topic of what to do (in practice), then what is at the core of their simulations is no more the reality in which they act, what they will start simulating is the very action(s) themselves. Therefore, this fourth group discussion is a language game of another kind than the three foregoing ones. To obtain a better diagnosis or interpretation of the situation, you have to create a better one, a changed (or re-organised) linguistic representation, and this representation is one of the core conditions on which you will perform your action. This representation is of course never identical with the reality it is assumed to represent—it contains shortcomings, biases and other peculiarities. So it is necessary always to judge the real, or practical situation you are in from the conditions of this practical situation itself, and not only from the (linguistic) interpretation schemata you bring with you into the situation/event.
In a certain sense we know this very well, so my way of phrasing this problematic mainly serves as a reminder of something which is more or less common-sense. What is important to note is that in practice the knowledge of this difference (often referred to as the difference between the map and the territory) is very often forgotten. This is especially the case when practitioners discuss what they shall do, that is, when they simulate action by means of language. During the three first sessions the linguistic representation of a situation, a diagnosis, may as we have seen very well be replaced only by another linguistic simulation - another diagnosis. However, whatever the quality or the aptness of any diagnosis - it is never identical with what is diagnosed, because it is a linguistic simulation. Further, the conditions of the language game of simulating action in this fourth session[m1], are of course not identical with the conditions of performing the action. The essential difference to the three preceding sessions, however, is that the simulations of action are not to be replaced by some other (better) simulations - they are to replaced by the practical action which are going to take place. And the difference between any simulation of action and the practical action itself is essentially different from the difference between two different simulations (which is the case by two different diagnoses).
If this kind of essential difference is overlooked , the group discussions which simulate future action end (END OF P. 214) up as simply theories of action, ‘theories’ in which both the practical conditions on which the action takes place and the actions themselves are represented in oversimplified ways. We end up with simple words about complex deeds, words with a very little practical potential. To avoid this in a dialogue conference, in the last session we do not ask the participants to anticipate the content and the outcome of the work with the development tasks, the solutions to the problems, even though this is what they themselves very much want to do. Instead, we ask them to anticipate the processes and procedures, the frames and the conditions within which the content and outcome can be created and produced in practice. In other words, the participants are asked to work out a proposal for how the development tasks can be most appropriately organised. And we ask them to consider that day to day it is the work on the operative tasks which take most - if not all - of the time, and are given the first priority.
This distinction between simulating the content of the work with development tasks and simulating the organising of the process by which this content is to take shape, may appear a subtle one. Perhaps it is, but it is nevertheless a very fundamental one. At a dialogue conference, we usually present this distinction as one between content and process, and the most effective device to make the participants be aware of the difference and make it operative in their dialogues, is to put focus on how to organise (the process of) the work with the development tasks. This way of presenting the topic also makes it possible to draw a link ‘back’ to the parallel or analogy between the concept of work organisation, in which the operative tasks are performed, and the concept of development organisation, by which we mean the supplementary organisational devices necessary to get the work with the development tasks carried out.
Depending on the character of the development tasks, such a development organisation will be more or less complicated. The last session of group discussions at the dialogue conference produces a number of proposals for how these development tasks might be organised. As mentioned above, usually no decisions are made at the conference. After the conference, when everybody is ‘back at work’, the management in co-operation with the union make the decisions on how the development processes as a whole will be organised, so that the practical development work takes place at a pace appropriate to the capacity and resources of this particular enterprise. In this way the local development organisation takes shape.
The Development
Organisation
Now, one dialogue conference makes no summer - though it may produce a better climate. The ambition of this kind of action research project is not so much to create a temporary bridge between the theories of the research community and the practice of the practitioners. Rather, the purpose is to help create a (more) sustainable bridge between theory and practice within some community of practitioners. One main element in this bridge we have entitled development organisation, which designates the totality of the work with development tasks which at any time is organised at an enterprise. Just like the work on different kinds of operational tasks requires different kinds of work organisation(s), the work with development tasks also requires various kind of organisational forms.
Thus, the local development organisation of an enterprise is no rigid organisational structure, which once established should bear on the one and same organisational form. Rather, the methods used to construct a development organisation, which allows those who are to perform the development tasks to participate deeply in the formation of it, thereby also allows for very flexible organisational forms. To illustrate this point, I will briefly sketch how the engineering enterprise proceeded to work with some of its main development tasks, and thereby also give brief indication on how our way to collaborate with enterprises undergo changes in the course of time, as both the enterprises and we learn and gain new insights on the basis of our practical experiences.
As will be noticed, the work with preparing and running a dialogue conference is one our most significant contributions to the practical work with organisational development at the enterprise. The staging of the practical development work after the conference, or the establishing of the development organisation, is (of course) the responsibility of the enterprise. It is of very great importance that the enterprise do not ‘outsource’ this task to us, because then they do not themselves get the practical experience with this kind of work necessary to obtain the competence and knowledge which is required to proceed continuously with development work based on broad participation, by means of a kinds of (changing) local development organisation, which is the ultimate purpose of our action research approach/strategy.
However, we are involved in ‘coaching’ the practical process of organising the development work, through an ongoing dialogue with a selection of representatives from the enterprise (both management and union), on their experience of problems, progresses and backlashes in the course of the process. Generally speaking, this means that we on the one hand give (positive) advice on what solutions to create, for example on what organisational forms to develop, if that is an issue, and on the other hand we give (negative) warnings and objections to those of their proposals and thinking on how to proceed/the process, in which their desire for quick solutions has tempted them into creating procedures which look simple on paper, but which obviously (to us) will function even more simply in practice. In this sense, the coaching process may be regarded as a kind of learning process, in which the people of the enterprise learn to enhance (END OF P. 215) their competence in distinguishing between the language games of anticipating solutions, and the language games of anticipating the processes/procedures by which the solutions are to be generated.
The benefit for the enterprise from our persistence on the point that the bridge between theory and practice is not built by creating a very detailed picture of the practice on paper or in words, but by reoccurring reflections and careful thinking (talking) of how to organise the practical procedures by which the ‘theory’ (or their linguistically formulated objectives) should be put into practice, consisted not only in the practical improvements which thereby were reached/obtained. Gradually this theoretical point appeared more and more self-evident to them. They became more capable of handling this point in practice themselves, which in turn made it possible to make use of the limited support from us on other development tasks. In the case of this engineering enterprise, the dialogue conference and the subsequent organising of the development organisation resulted in that half a year later, more than 75% of the formerly huge pile of improvement proposals, which became both re-organised and supplemented in the course of the conference, had been carried out in practice.
A dialogue conference for the ‘experienced’ enterprise
Thus, the results of the work with development tasks do not consist only in these practical improvements. The experiences made by this way of organising and working with development tasks also have as a result that the partcipants become more aware of the difficulties in the relationship between word and deed, and by means of the experiences they make they also obtain increased competence on how to cope with this kind of difficulties in practice. Evidence for this we can find for instance in the preparing and running of the next dialogue conference at this same enterprise, which took place 1 ½ year after the first one.
This second dialogue conference was devoted partly to the question of continuous improvements, partly to a strategy of competence development, featuring a process of mapping the future competence needs, and the subsequent working out of a plan to provide the necessary competence development. In the preparation of this conference, the key personnel from the enterprise was much more qualified in the issue of how to organise and run it than was the case by the previous one. Thus, we mostly coached them in the process of forming the conference design, and only on the question of how to map the picture of the competence (qualifications) of the work force, we had to make some more extensive, not to say creative, interventions.
The ‘Competence Development Project’ was undertaken in co-operation with a consulting firm, and as will be known, this kinds of project is very often based on very extensive and detailed schemes for classification of various kinds of competence - partly because the range and scope of competencies really is very extensive and complex, and partly because the working out and filling in of these schemes is a nice source of income for the consulting firms in this field. In short, our intervention consisted partly in arguing that the application of a very minute system of competence classification was a bit like cracking nut with a very nicely chased silver hammer, and partly in showing that a participative method of mapping, largely based on a kind of self-evaluation, would better fit the need for the practical outcome of the mapping process. Once again, this time within a new context, we had to remind that the point of the mapping was not to create a neat map, but to create just some of the tools required to change the terrain. The consulting firm of course had to apply to the requirements of its customers, with no bad feelings, as it were.
On this basis the dialogue conference was run, this time by conference staff from the enterprise, with us only operating ‘back stage’ coaching the conference staff on the overall structure of design, some strategic choices and some details, in the course of the run. The kind of development organisation which was staged on the ground of this conference, was organised in groups in each department, and connected to the co-operative forum where the department manager and the shop steward at the department level meets. They worked partly with improvement tasks, partly with the competence development project. Half a year later 80% of the dedicated improvement tasks were solved, and two years later 75% of the work force had got their certificate as skilled workers in their respective disciplines (against 40% at the time of the conference).
How action research
verifies the use of words: The Strategy Forum
The question of what was the outcome of these dialogue conferences is by no means fully answered by the few remarks I have made above on this topic, and I have hardly touched upon the question of what might be considered the total outcome of our action research projects in collaboration with the enterprise from which I have presented a few glimpses in this article. Anyhow, the question what is the use of all this use of words in the end will inevitably pose itself. Of course, there is a lot more to say on this question than have been said in the presentation above. However, to give a scientifically satisfying answer is just not a matter of presenting facts. On the contrary: What is to be regarded as (matters of) facts, will to a large extent be dependent on the way of conceptualising the question of the use, results or outcome of action research projects. I will start my (END OF P. 216) concluding discussion on the question of outcome by an exposition of this thesis.
Let’s take a look at this matter from a pragmatic point of view: If one wants to get an account of what is the output, the practical impact of our linguistic interventions, our staging of dialogue conferences, the establishing of a local development organisation and our coaching of this process, a minimum requirement is to get some information from some key personnel from the enterprise(s) in question. Among these, who is in a position to give the correct answer? The top manager? The accountant? The shop steward? Whoever is regarded as the right or legitimate one, it is easily seen that the answer they give will necessarily be an interpretation of the nature of both the intervention and the outcome, and of the relation between them. Further, it is even more easily seen that this - or any - interpretation may be contested by other actors at the enterprise. In short, the question of the practical use of the dialogical approach necessarily have to be answered by some kind of dialogical procedure.
My pragmatic remarks are not put forth to make the whole question of output disappear in a hair-splitting debate. Rather to the opposite, in our approach we are very careful not to let the question of output, of practical results or practical impact disappear in quasi-scientific discussions on what are - or ought to be - the criteria according to which the question of practical output could be univocally answered. Therefore, by any such action research project we always from the beginning on establish a procedure by which a continuous interpretation and evaluation of the practical outcome of the project can be undertaken. The procedure simply consists of organising a kind of forum, usually labelled a strategy forum, in which the top management, the union and eventually other groups of key personnel are represented - plus ourselves. This strategy forum is organised mainly to develop the overall strategy of the enterprise development project which is (to be) carried out, and how this will be regularly evaluated, normally according to organised phases or certain ‘milestones’ of the process.
The dialogues in this strategy forum also scrutinise evaluations of the results of the on-going development process. For the enterprises, the question of practical outcome is the touchstone. For us the three main criteria are that the development tasks are crucial to the overall business strategy; that the development process involves a broad participation of enterprise members; and last but not least, that the collaboration with us on enterprise development is intended to go on continuously over a number of years. To us, this last mentioned condition is closely related to the question of the practical outcome: If there is no or insufficient practical impact, the collaboration will be terminated.
In this sense, we leave the task of ‘measuring’ the output to the
enterprises themselves. As will have been noticed, we do not leave this task to
them without influence from us on the ‘measurement methods’ they apply, since
this is part of the discussion in the strategy forum. This way of proceeding is
not established by accident, rather it is an important aspect of our action
research approach. To the objection that in this way we ourselves do influence
on the very ‘instrument’ of measurement, we will simply answer: «Yes, indeed».
This kind of objection presupposes that there might exist scientific
instruments for measuring the practical results which are not ‘influenced’ by
those undertaking the measurement - which is to presuppose that there exists a
kind of social science which has abolished the use of language, a social
science without any use of
words.
(END OF P. 217)
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[m1]I think replacing this sentence from your original helps make the meaning clearer