The Journal of Applied

Behavioral Science
Volume 45 Number 3
September 2009 348-368
© 2009 NTL Institute

Revisioning Organization 10.1177/0021886309335070

http://jabs.sagepub.com

Development hosted at
http://online.sagepub.com

Diagnostic and Dialogic Premises

and Patterns of Practice
Gervase R. Bushe
Simon Fraser University
Robert J. Marshak
American University

This article identifies a bifurcation in the practice of organization development (OD)

that is not fully acknowledged or discussed in OD textbooks or journal articles. Forms
of OD practice exist that do not adhere to key assumptions and prescriptions of the
founders of OD. Some of these dialogical forms of organization development practice
are described and contrasts and similarities with the original, diagnostic, form of OD
are analyzed. Practices that define dialogical forms of OD are identified with a call for
increased acknowledgment of this bifurcation in OD research, practice, and teaching.

Keywords: organization development; change theory; social construction

I n recent years there has been a great deal of commentary and controversy about
the state of organization development (OD). Current critiques tend to focus on the
underlying value system of OD and whether the more traditional humanistic values
espoused by the founders of the field are still relevant and actionable or should be
replaced by more pragmatic business considerations articulated by newer practitio-
ners (D. L. Bradford & Burke, 2004, 2005). Some wonder if OD is dead or dying
(Cox, 2005; Harvey, 2005). In these discussions, different trends or orientations to
the practice of OD are primarily attributed to differences in underlying values, pos-
sibly connected to shifts in business needs and expectations as well as generational
differences (Worley & Feyerherm, 2003).
Absent in the discussions about value orientations, however, is any clear recogni-
tion that in the past 20 or 25 years a different kind of OD practice has emerged
whose underlying assumptions are not consistent with some of the original, basic

Authors’ Note: The authors thank the editor of The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Dick Woodman,
and three anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this article. Their comments led to a
materially better presentation.

348
 Bushe, Marshak / Revisioning Organization Development   349

premises of OD. In this article, we describe more than half a dozen popular and suc-
cessful OD practices that are based on differing philosophical notions than those
assumed in foundational OD theory and practice, for example, more constructionist
than objectivist in orientation. These philosophical and theoretical differences are not
well represented in current OD textbooks, curricula, and certificate programs, nor
(based on our experiences in the classroom, at conferences, and in the field) are they
well understood by practitioners, especially newer practitioners. Some of the contri-
butions of this article are identifying some of the alternative premises and assump-
tions that have been found useful by consultants and clients and beginning the
process of articulating the broader principles that make them effective.
Many post positivist innovations in philosophy and science have been incorporated
to some degree in OD theory and practice, for example, social constructionism (Barrett,
Thomas, & Hocevar, 1995), postmodernism (Boje, 1991), the new sciences in biology
and physics (Wheatley, 2006), complexity theory (Olson & Eoyang, 2001; Stacy,
1992), critical theory (Carr, 2000), and various narrative and linguistic turns (Heracleous
& Barrett, 2001; Marshak & Grant, 2008; McConkie & Boss, 1994; Oswick, Grant,
Michelson, & Wailes, 2005). However, we think it is fair to say that these newer theo-
retical orientations to social reality and organizational change are underrepresented in
OD textbooks in comparison to the behavioral, humanistic, and open systems theories
that helped shape the original formulation of OD in the 1950s and 1960s. Practices
congruent with post-1960s theories also tend to be framed as developments rather than
departures, thereby tacitly downplaying the import of their differences in both theory
and practice. In a similar observation about what’s changing in OD, Mirvis (2006) noted
the failure “to account for dramatic changes in OD’s science base that challenged pre-
vailing theories and the assumptions behind them” (p. 83).
In this article, we are trying to open up the possibility that there are different
enough forms of OD in terms of theoretical and philosophical premises, and not just
practice technologies or underlying values, to warrant closer inquiry and recognition
in the official literature(s) of this field. Right now in most academic and practitioner
publications there is only one, monolithic OD, presumed to be practiced using varia-
tions of the same foundational premises. In our experience, this leads to confusion
and misunderstandings especially when people without much theoretical background
try to combine, for example, objective diagnosis with self-organizing interventions.
The originators of these newer OD practices may or may not be explicitly aware
of the contrast in basic assumptions we explore here; in most cases they do not dis-
cuss them. These different OD practices have emerged, we think, because of a gen-
eral shift in the popular awareness and acceptance of the new theories and premises
on which they are based and because they work—that is, they provide consultants
with new ways of improving organizational effectiveness while staying true to OD’s
humanistic value base. This article intends to give voice and a beginning coherence
to this new form of OD and bring its underlying assumptions into the mainstream of
teaching, research, and practice.
350   The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science

In the following we review some of the basic assumptions underlying the kind of
OD that is currently widely taught and found in OD textbooks, what we label in this
article Diagnostic OD. This is followed by a description of some of the current orga-
nizational change and consulting practices that we believe point to the rough out-
lines of a new, Dialogic form of OD. We then contrast some of the basic assumptions
about people, social systems, and change found in Diagnostic and Dialogic OD. We
discuss why these newer practices should still be considered OD despite their differ-
ences with some of the original, foundational premises, specifically the ways in which
Dialogic OD adheres to the original values and aspirations of the field. In the last
sections, we identify some of the common features in various forms of Dialogic OD
practice and then discuss some of the implications associated with these develop-
ments for research, practice, and teaching.

Foundational Assumptions of Diagnostic OD

The original formulation of organization development has a strong positivist ori-

entation based in mid-20th-century social science. Many of the founders of OD were
professors at highly ranked universities with strong research orientations like the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Michigan, Yale, University of California–Los
Angeles, Boston University, and Case Western Reserve. The classical OD approach
to action research as a data-based change method presumes the existence of an
objective, discernable reality that can be investigated or researched to produce valid
data and information to influence change. In the first part of Lewin’s famous dictum,
no action without research and no research without action (Marrow, 1969), he meant
empirical research about the system should precede attempts to change it. Many of
the founders of OD argued that one of the core tasks of a change agent is the creation
of valid data (e.g., Argyris, 1973; Beckhard, 1969; Bennis, 1969). Valid data are
assumed to reflect or mirror an underlying objective reality, a deeper structure that
underlies the surface things OD consultants and people see. This commitment to
empirical, scientific inquiry may well be why OD is one of the few fields of consult-
ing practice to also be recognized as a scholarly discipline. Very few recognizable
fields of business or organizational consulting have resulted in that; there are not many,
if any, masters’ degrees in Total Quality Management or process re-engineering, for
example.
In many writings and virtually all OD textbooks (e.g., Brown & Harvey, 2005,
Cummings & Worley, 2009; McLean, 2005), the purpose of this data gathering is
described as diagnosis—the organization exists as an entity that needs examina-
tion prior to prescribing remedies. “Diagnosis is a highly desirable, if not essential,
precursor for informed and effective organization development and change . . . inter-
ventions” (McCulloch & Cronshaw, 2008, p. 89). That formulation links with another
 Bushe, Marshak / Revisioning Organization Development   351

element of classical OD, the emphasis on the organization as an open or living sys-
tem. One of the impetuses to the rise of OD was the emergence of open systems
theory (Katz & Kahn, 1966; Von Bertalanffy, 1967) and the contrast of this organic
metaphor with the more mechanistic, scientific management view of organizations
prevailing prior to the 1960s (Burns & Stalker, 1961; Morgan, 2006). Regardless of
whether one might argue that OD still treats organizations mechanistically, in foun-
dational OD theory and contemporary writings, organizations are viewed as adapt-
ing to their external environment just as groups and people inside organizations
adapt to their environment. One of the first books in the classic Addison Wesley OD
series in the late 1960s was a version of Lawrence and Lorsch’s (1969) seminal work
on organizations as open systems. Early formulations of OD are virtually all based
on positivist open systems premises, which continue to be prominent in OD treatises
and textbooks. When viewing organizations as if they are like living systems, it makes
sense to build models of optimal organizing in a given environment and compare a
given team or organization to them. It also makes sense to assess them against stan-
dards for “healthy” organizations and to prescribe interventions or treatments based on
an “objective” diagnosis.
What we refer to as diagnosis in this article is the attempt to gather data to com-
pare a given team or organization against a prescriptive model or desired future state.
Methodologies congruent with these assumptions, such as classical OD action research,
sociotechnical systems analysis, survey feedback, task-oriented team development, and
SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis are then employed
to help guide problem solving, decision making, and action planning. The assumption
that there are objective data that can be used in a process of social discovery, there-
fore, is a central aspect of the change process in Diagnostic OD. As we next discuss,
these bedrock premises and practices are now being challenged by newer OD prac-
tices operating implicitly or explicitly from other assumptions.

Emerging Dialogic OD Practices

We now describe a set of practices that we believe differ enough from classical,
Diagnostic OD in philosophical and/or theoretical ways to merit being considered a
bifurcated form of OD. None of the practices to be discussed here differ on all dimen-
sions or exactly in the same ways. Instead, they form a loose or fuzzy set of premises
and practices we believe should be considered different enough from foundational
premises and practices to merit their own identity, development, and inquiry.
We begin by noting that practice always demands utility, and OD tends to develop
through the interplay of attempts at planned change bumping up against social science
theory. What we are calling Dialogic OD has not always emerged from conscious
attempts to apply theory to practice. Some of these newer OD practices began from
identifying what worked for accomplishing change without any real theory.
352   The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science

Of all the new OD practices, the ones most clearly articulating a stance different
from the positivism of Diagnostic OD are appreciative inquiry approaches (Cooperrider,
Barrett, & Srivastva, 1995; Cooperrider & Srivastva, 1987). Firmly grounded in Gergen’s
(1978) critique of positivism in social science, appreciative inquiry assumes there is no
inherently real form of social organizing to be discovered. Instead, social organiza-
tion is open to infinite possibilities constrained only by the human imagination and
collective will. Rather than attempting to diagnose and manage change levers, appre-
ciative inquiry seeks to evoke new ideas that will compel self-organizing change
(Bushe & Kassam, 2005). Instead of objective facts, the data for this inquiry are the
narratives (stories) people hold about the best of . . . whatever the inquiry is about
(Ludema, 2002). Rather than diagnosis after the data are collected, appreciative
inquiry begins from the moment of first contact between consultant and client to
frame inquiries that will generate positive change (Cooperrider & Whitney, 2001).
Some have labeled appreciative inquiry to be another form of action research (e.g.,
Cummings & Worley, 2009). Depending on how broadly one defines action research,
one could agree. However, to the degree that OD textbooks define action research
to mean classical OD data collection, diagnosis, and intervention following the phases
of the OD consulting model, then including appreciative inquiry as a variant of that
definition is at a minimum misleading.
Other successful forms of Dialogic OD are Search Conferences and Future Search,
which are designed to help large groups arrive at agreements about the future they
want and actions to achieve it (M. Emery & Purser, 1996; Weisbord, 1993). Whereas
data are certainly gathered and used in these approaches, it is more for the purposes
of presenting multiple possibilities and perspectives than bringing objective “facts”
to bear on the situation or producing an objective diagnosis against an ideal model to
change behaviors. Instead the greater emphasis is on reaching new social agreements
or adopting new mindsets and, therefore, new realities to guide future actions. Future
Search processes have also been influential in the emergence of certain variants of
appreciative inquiry (Ludema, Whitney, Mohr, & Griffin, 2003).
Open Space (Owen, 2008) is another popular and successful OD practice that
does not employ diagnosis. Instead it creates a container that allows for a bottom-up
identification of the interests and motivations latent in any large group and helps
people with common interests find each other and make agreements about the future.
World Café (Brown & Issacs, 2005) has some similarities to Open Space in creating
a bottom-up process for identifying what is latent in a large group. In the case of
World Café, however, what it helps identify are latent mental models through a more
structured process and nuanced facilitation than Open Space.
The widely used Technology of Participation of the Institute of Cultural Affairs in
the United States is designed to help groups in conflict develop common ground to
jointly plan and take action (Oyler & Harper, 2007; Spencer, 1989). Their four-stage
ORID process (objective, reflective, interpretive and decisional) is based on a model
of the natural flow of human thought processes. Although it begins by seeking what
 Bushe, Marshak / Revisioning Organization Development   353

“facts” are known to participants and then encourages them to reflect on those facts,
there are no data collected independent of people’s beliefs, assumptions, or stories
nor any encouragement to diagnose the system. Instead the process attempts to gen-
erate a practical vision and surface underlying contradictions before agreeing on
strategies for attaining that vision.
What may be labeled discursive or conversational approaches to working with
people, groups, and larger social systems also base their change processes less on
trying to diagnose and define the current system than on developing narratives, sto-
ries, or conversations that aid in the establishment of more effective or just patterns
of organizing (e.g., Marshak & Grant, 2008). Bushe’s (2009) work on organizational
learning explicitly assumes that there are multiple realities in any group and that
attempting to agree on one interpretation of the variety of experiences people hold
is counterproductive to changing dysfunctional patterns in collaborative work systems.
Instead, this model asserts that change happens when people become aware of the
variety of stories people have about themselves and each other and understand their
own part in creating unproductive patterns of interaction. Oliver’s (2005) work on
reflexive consultancy considers how people can introduce transformation in meaning
and action without silencing, oppressing, or marginalizing the multiple beliefs, dis-
courses, and values found in any given organization. Narrative approaches to con-
flict management have recently emerged, offering quite different premises and
methods for intervening than more traditional, interest-based methods (Kellett &
Dalton, 2001; Winslade & Monk, 2000). A related track comes from applications of
solution focused therapy, which emphasizes the power of words and language and
the importance of changing mindsets for creating lasting change (P. Z. Jackson &
McKergow, 2002). In all of these approaches, the OD consultant is working from
explicit or implicit premises about how language shapes social reality and that inter-
ventions need to directly address discursive phenomena to affect strategies, struc-
tures, systems, leadership, rewards, and so on (Barrett et al, 1995).
These are some examples of newer OD practices that we believe differ enough
from foundational premises in similar ways to merit classification as a category, form,
or type of OD in textbooks, journals, and the broader literature. A closer look at the
differences between these newer forms of OD and classical OD follows.

Contrasting Diagnostic and Dialogic

Organization Development

One of the important ways Diagnostic and Dialogic OD differ is that most of the
newer OD practices emphasize a view of human systems as dialogic systems (Boje
& Khadija, 2005) or meaning-making systems (Bushe, 2009) rather than biological
or open systems. In classical OD, the biological metaphor inherent in the open sys-
tems model encourages people to think of organizations as a collection of structures
354   The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science

and processes adapting to or, in more complex formulations, coevolving with their
environment. From this point of view it makes sense to try and figure out the optimal
mix of processes and structures in a given kind of environment. It’s then appropriate
to try and copy successful innovations from one firm into another firm with similar
conditions or sharing the same ecological niche. It also makes sense to use diagnos-
tic models that assume there are optimal kinds of organization–environment fit.
Proponents of dialogical forms of OD don’t necessarily dispute that organizations
can be described as open systems, they are just more mindful of the limitations.
Because collective sensemaking about structures, processes, leadership actions,
change models, interventions, and the like are idiosyncratic to whatever group or
organization they are applied in, attempts to simply copy an innovation or change
process from one system to another system, without thoughtful leadership adapting
to local conditions, will usually result in unwanted outcomes. Ideal models of group
or organizational functioning meet the same fate because organizational members
will attribute their own meanings to whatever leaders or consultants roll out, thus
making diagnosis and intervention against an ideal model more a matter of construct-
ing a world than discovering one.
Objective data collection and accurate diagnosis as formal steps in these newer
OD practices appear to be less prevalent for at least three reasons. Pragmatically, the
speed at which things are changing in most organizations makes attempts at data
collection and diagnosis difficult or irrelevant (Eisenhardt & Martin, 2000). In tur-
bulent environments or under conditions of hyper growth, by the time a diagnosis is
completed too many aspects of the organization have changed.
Secondly, diagnosis entails a problem-centric approach to action research, where
the assumption is that the organization is broken and needs fixing. This makes orga-
nizational members more wary and ultimately more resistant to change (Boyd &
Bright, 2007). Dialogic OD processes tend to rest on an opportunity-centric (Boyd
& Bright, 2007) approach that starts from common aspirations and shared visions,
making engagement in the change process more appealing.
Thirdly, it only makes sense to collect data and diagnose as separate formal steps
if one assumes that there is something objectively real and tangible independent of
the meaning-making process to diagnose. Many of the dialogic forms of OD explic-
itly or implicitly assume that the social systems, social learning, and social processes
responsible for organizational performance do not have this kind of tangible reality.
Instead, for example, any data collected are used not to identify the “factual” prob-
lem or the “truth” but to raise collective awareness of the multitude of perspectives
and discourses at play in the system and/or the meaning-making process itself.
The prescription to diagnose before taking action is also being violated by some
who still use a biological metaphor in explaining their work. The work of Richard
and Emily Axlerod and their associates is a good example (R. Axelrod & Axelrod,
2000). They use the language of open systems to describe their process but they
don’t really treat organizations as living organisms to be studied. Like most of the
 Bushe, Marshak / Revisioning Organization Development   355

newer change processes we are describing, they are interested in inquiry—but that
isn’t really so much a diagnostic research process as “asking questions that focus our
attention towards deeply felt, collective aspirations, creating hospitable conditions
that invite the diversity of the system to step in and take initiative” (E. Axelrod, Cady,
& Holman, in press). Their model is more interested in seeing what emerges than
defining “what is” to prescribe “what ought to happen.” A similar example is the work
of Ralph Stacey (2000, 2007) and his associates at the University of Hertfordshire,
who couch their models in the language of complex systems but do not offer pre-
scriptive models of organizational functioning and are highly sensitive to the idio-
syncrasies of human experience and sense making.
A third aspect of Diagnostic OD that contrasts with Dialogic OD is the focus on
behavior—another influence of the times when OD was founded. In the 1950s, one
of the dominant influences in psychology was behaviorism and this, along with
positivist premises, helped lead researchers to focus on measurable behavior in their
studies of people and organizations. For example, the subtitle of Argyris’s (1973)
first book on OD practice is A Behavioral Science View. Porras and Robertson (1992)
described OD as a practice for “enhancing individual development and improving
organizational performance, through alteration of organizational members’ on-the-job
behaviors” (p. 272). Brown and Harvey (2005) said that OD “includes a series of
planned behavioral science intervention activities . . . to help find improved ways of
working together toward individual and organizational goals” (p. 3). Finally, the
subtitle to the French and Bell (1998) standard textbook on OD captures the essence
of this orientation: Behavioral Science Interventions for Organizational Improvement.
Whereas both Diagnostic and Dialogic OD are interested in changing actions and the
consequences of those actions, their assumptions about how that happens differ.
Dialogic OD doesn’t seek to change behavior directly, as Diagnostic OD does.
Instead, Dialogic OD focuses on changing the frameworks that guide what people
think and say. The assumption is that people don’t so much resist change as they
resist being changed (Wheatley, 2006). By focusing on the symbols, images, and
narratives used to make meaning, and changing those, changes in behavior are self-
generated (Bushe & Kassam, 2005). Instead of emphasizing interventions related to
changing norms, rewards, and motivations, the Dialogic OD consultant emphasizes
changing the framings and meaning making that guide behavioral responses.
For many dialogic change models, a key source of change are generative ideas
(Gergen, 1978; Schön, 1993). The classical, Diagnostic OD model assumes that change
requires the participation of a cross-section of system members to analyze and under-
stand the organization and propose changes to increase the organization’s effective-
ness (Lippitt, Watson, & Westley, 1958). The Dialogic OD model assumes that change
comes from the emergence and widespread embrace by the whole system of stake-
holders of new ideas, models, metaphors, and theories that “challenge the guiding
assumptions of the culture, . . . raise fundamental questions, . . . foster reconsidera-
tion of that which is ‘taken for granted’ and thereby furnish new alternatives for social
356   The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science

actions” (Gergen, 1978, p. 1346). In Dialogic OD, change comes from changes in
meaning making and new, associated decisions and actions people can and will take
as a result of those changes in meaning.
Of note in most of these newer forms of OD practice is that the role of the OD
consultant is somewhat different from that of the consultant working with data in clas-
sical forms of Diagnostic OD. Instead of facilitating project groups doing data collec-
tion and diagnosis, dialogic interventions are more choreographed events that create a
“container” or enabling conditions within which stakeholders can share their views of
social reality and seek common agreements in real time. The role of the consultant
is to help create and maintain a safe and bounded space for interactions and to
explicitly or implicitly attend to the political dynamics inherent in bringing together
different stakeholders with different bases of power and beliefs. In this regard, there
may be some similarities between dialogical forms of consultation and the role of
the classic T-group facilitator (L. P. Bradford, Gibb, & Benne, 1964) but we have not
seen that discussed in any of the Dialogic OD literature.
We echo the argument forwarded by Austin and Bartunek (2006) in their discus-
sion of discursive or conversational OD practices and view dialogical forms of OD
as falling predominately within Van de Ven and Poole’s (1995) “dialectical motor of
change” type. In the dialectical model, change processes involve confronting, engag-
ing, or otherwise raising consciousness about alternative perspectives (paradigms,
schemas, mindsets, social realities, etc.) leading to new syntheses, perspectives, or
outcomes. In contrast, a great many of the Diagnostic OD interventions might safely
be categorized as teleological in the Van de Ven and Poole typology. Teleological
change processes involve identification of desired goals or end states and then pur-
poseful planning to achieve them. These differences are summarized in Table 1.
We believe that an identifiable shift toward these newer premises and patterns of
practice, or the bifurcation point, occurred in the early to middle 1980s. For example,
Open Space technology was first introduced in the mid-1980s (Owen, 1992), the first
article on Appreciative Inquiry was published in 1987 (Cooperrider & Srivastva, 1987),
and practice preceded publication. Some of the forces that probably contributed to this
bifurcation were the rise of constructionist and cognitive orientations in the organiza-
tional sciences, the introduction of change management practices by the major consult-
ing companies that challenged some traditional areas of OD practice, and increased
interest in multicultural realities due to globalization (Marshak, 2005).

What’s Similar in All Forms of OD?

Although the newer forms of OD do not embrace the full range of premises of many
of the founders, they do embrace their humanistic and democratic values. Despite the
concerns about different value orientations, we believe there is a bedrock set of
values that holds all forms of OD together. In both diagnostic and dialogic forms of
 Bushe, Marshak / Revisioning Organization Development   357

Table 1
Contrasting Diagnostic and Dialogic Organization Development (OD)
Diagnostic OD Dialogic OD

Influenced by Classical science, positivism, and Interpretive approaches, social

modernist philosophy constructionism, critical and
postmodern philosophy

Dominant organizational Organizations are like living Organizations are meaning-making

construct systems systems

Ontology and • Reality is an objective fact • Reality is socially constructed

epistemology • There is a single reality • There are multiple realities
• Truth is transcendent and • Truth is immanent and emerges
discoverable from the situation
• Reality can be discovered using • Reality is negotiated and may
rational and analytic processes involve power and political
processes

Constructs of change • Usually teleological • Often dialogical or dialectical

• Collecting and applying valid • Creating containers and
data using objective problem- processes to produce generative
solving methods leads to change ideas leads to change
• Change can be created, planned, • Change can be encouraged but
and managed is mainly self-organizing
• Change is episodic, linear, and • Change may be continuous and/
goal oriented or cyclical

Focus of change Emphasis on changing behavior Emphasis on changing mindsets

and what people do and what people think

OD, these values and ideals reflect the empowering and collaborative nature of OD
practices, interest in increasing awareness about and in a system to change it, the
facilitative and enabling (as opposed to expert) role of the consultant, and the under-
lying goal of developing and enhancing organizations and broader social systems.
Those with a dialogical perspective who are attuned to critical and postmodern
theories may, perhaps, be more aware of limitations to attaining ideals like free and
informed choice (Argyris, 1973), authenticity and congruence (Bennis, 1969), partici-
pative democracy (F. E. Emery, Thorsrud & Trist, 1969), and trust and collaboration
(Tannenbaum & Davis, 1969) than were the pioneers. Critical theorists emphasize that
any inquiry process contains seeds of domination and control (Fineman, 2006). For
example, Kersten (2000), using Habermas’ model of dialogue and the public sphere,
argued that attempts by consultants to improve race relations in organizations actu-
ally reinforced the status quo. Emancipatory processes are “uncertain, contradictory,
ambiguous and precarious” (Alvesson & Willmott, 1992, p. 446) and require a high
level of reflexivity and self- and political awareness (Johnson, in press; Oliver, 2005;
358   The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science

Raelin, 2008). Still, OD consultants operating from dialogical premises attempt to

use methods consistent with those traditional OD values. Like classical diagnostic
practices, the newer Dialogic OD practices are highly participative and attempt to
circumvent the power of entrenched interests to equalize the variety of interests rep-
resented in the system, giving them as much equal footing in the coconstruction of new
relational and organizational realities as possible. Coercive and rational change pro-
cesses are also eschewed in favor of normative re-educative ones (Chin & Benne,
1969). This is as much a pragmatic as a value-based position. Practitioners of these
newer forms of OD argue that teleological attempts to mandate and implement a
predetermined organizational culture or corporate values are more likely to have
negative, unintended consequences (Harris & Ogbonna, 2002; Ogbonna & Wilkinson,
2003). Instead of “waterfall interventions” that follow vertical hierarchies, creating
and facilitating containers within which whole systems “talk to themselves” and self-
organize are more likely to be advocated in newer OD interventions.
One of the ways in which the differences between Dialogic and Diagnostic OD get
obscured results from their common interest in fostering greater system awareness. In
Dialogic OD, this occurs through intersubjective processes of inquiry. Because infor-
mation and ideas are shared and discussed, these Dialogic OD processes are often
equated with data collection and classical diagnosis. Whereas inquiry and data collec-
tion can be synonyms, the image of inquiry in Dialogic OD is sufficiently different
from the vision of data collection in, say, Nadler’s (1977) classic OD text on the
subject that equating them obscures more than it reveals. What is similar, however, is
an interest in processes that foster greater system awareness.
The role of the consultant in Dialogic OD is also consistent with Diagnostic OD’s
emphasis on facilitating and enabling others as opposed to providing expert advice
(Schein, 1969, 1988). Like the Diagnostic OD consultant, the Dialogic OD consul-
tant’s expertise is in understanding human social processes and in offering change
and decision-making processes and enabling conditions that support organizational
goals and OD values. The underlying assumptions guiding the processes used by the
Dialogic OD consultant in carrying out this role, however, appear somewhat differ-
ent from those in Diagnostic OD. In Dialogic OD the consultant acts more as a
facilitator of events and constructor of a container within which client systems engage
themselves rather than being a central actor in diagnosis, intervention, and/or facili-
tation of interpersonal and group interactions—all hallmarks of Diagnostic OD. The
consultant’s relationship to the client system, however, is similar in both versions of
OD. In both forms of OD, consultants stay out of the content and focus, instead, on
processes while members of the system deal with the content. And the OD consul-
tant in both forms is concerned with developing the capacity of the client system and
not developing client dependence on the consultant (Cummings & Worley, 2009).
This emphasis on the consultant’s role in capacity building links to the final char-
acteristic both forms of OD share, an interest in development, though what it
means to develop an organization is perhaps the least developed aspect of OD
 Bushe, Marshak / Revisioning Organization Development   359

theory. Two strong underpinnings of OD are models of human growth and develop-
ment (e.g., Alderfer, 1972; Argyris, 1957; Maslow, 1954) and group development
theory (L. P. Bradford et al., 1964; Schein & Bennis, 1965; Schutz, 1958). McGregor
(1960) and Likert (1961, 1967), for example, helped birth the field of OD by apply-
ing the emerging ideas about human development to theories of management and
organization.
Developmental models at the individual, group, organization, and interorganiza-
tional levels tend to share similar conceptions of what constitutes a more developed
state (Bushe & Coetzer, 2007). There are, at a minimum, three common themes.
First, a person, group, organization, or network is more developed the greater aware-
ness it has of itself—it can talk to itself about itself. In an organization, this means
that members can talk freely to each other about their perceptions of the organiza-
tion. The less a person, group, or organization can talk to itself about itself the less
awareness there is or the more defenses there are to self-awareness, and this is
indicative of a less developed state. This characteristic of development appears in
modern psychology starting with Freud and continues to this day. Early definitions
of OD emphasized open communication (Beckhard, 1969), particularly the appro-
priate expression of feelings (Tannenbaum & Davis, 1969) and the reduction of
power and status differences to allow for the free flow of information (Beckhard,
1969; Bennis, 1969). Secondly, in a more developed system, emotional, reactive
behavior decreases and rational, goal-directed behavior increases. This showed up in
early definitions of OD particularly around decision making and conflict resolution
(Beckhard, 1969; Walton, 1969). Third, the more developed the system, the better
able it is to actualize its potential. This idea of actualizing potential begins with
Maslow’s (1954) hierarchy of human needs and appears in OD as a concern with
developing organizations that support human growth needs (Alderfer, 1972; Argyris,
1957), increase the effectiveness of people and groups within the organization
(Blake & Mouton, 1969; McGregor, 1960), and increase the organization’s capacity
to achieve its purpose in its environment (F. E. Emery & Trist, 1973; Lawrence &
Lorsch, 1969). Table 2 summarizes some of the similarities between Diagnostic OD
and the newer patterns of practice, summarized here as Dialogic OD.
In sum, it is these important commonalities that suggest we are dealing with dif-
ferent forms of OD rather than different species of consulting and change altogether.
Although the intervention strategies and practices of Dialogic OD may involve dif-
ferent premises about the nature of social systems and how they change, they also
retain the core values and ideals of classical, Diagnostic OD such as free and
informed choice, authenticity, integrity, participation, and collaboration. The role of
the Dialogic OD consultant is also similar in important ways to the diagnostic one,
although, as noted, the nature of the suggested processes and underlying premises
may differ. Finally, Dialogic OD is as concerned with developing more effective
groups, organizations, and especially broader systems as Diagnostic OD is, and they
share implicit theories of what a more developed system looks like.
360   The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science

Table 2
Similarities Between Diagnostic and Dialogic Forms
of Organization Development
Strong humanistic and democratic values
Greater system awareness is encouraged and facilitated, although via very different methods
Consultants stay out of content and focus on process
Concern for capacity building and development of the system

Toward a Definition of Dialogic OD

One of the most important similarities in Dialogic OD practices is that they

assume organizations are socially coconstructed realities and, as such, there is noth-
ing inherently real about how people organize, no ultimate truth about organizations
to be discovered, and no model of the right way to organize independent of the
people who make up any particular organization. What if one took seriously the idea
proposed by Cooperrider & Srivastva (1987), that the only limitation to how people
organize is their imagination and collective agreement about what is expected and
possible? These newer forms of OD seem to take that idea seriously.
What all these newer forms of OD also have in common is a search for ways to
promote more effective dialogue and conversation and a basic assumption that it is
by changing the conversations that normally take place in organizations that organi-
zations are ultimately transformed. Dialogic forms of OD are more focused on when,
where, and how to promote the kinds of conversations they advocate than on diag-
nosing the system against some kind of ideal model. When they engage in inquiry
as part of the change process, the purpose of that inquiry is dialogic: to surface,
legitimate, and learn from the variety of realities that coexist in the system. In
Dialogic OD, the purpose of an inquiry is not so much to analyze how the system
works but is more about increasing awareness of the variety of experiences con-
tained in the system.
The when, where, and how to hold these conversations is less about diagnosis and
fact finding and more about creating the enabling conditions for successful conver-
sations to take place. Open Space (Owen, 2008), for example, could be described as
a loose container or set of enabling conditions for those with innovative ideas and
motivations to find kindred others. The Axelrods’ process of Collaborative Loops
sets the enabling conditions as (a) having a workshop with dissimilar teams who
(b) work together to create their own change processes while (c) following a prescribed
sequence of activities. This set of prescriptions for increasing engagement is consid-
ered by them to be central to the change process (R. Axelrod & Axelrod, 2000).
Appreciative Inquiry uses storytelling of positive experiences among participants as
an enabling condition to uncovering common dreams and aspirations (Cooperrider,
Whitney, & Stavros, 2008). The Technology of Participation of the Institute of Cultural
 Bushe, Marshak / Revisioning Organization Development   361

Affairs is similar in its preference for crafting inquiries into what unites people rather
than what currently divides them. But the process used to create focused conversa-
tions and consensual decisions among groups of people (Oyler & Harper, 2007) is
quite different and requires specialized facilitation. By contrast, World Café’s
enabling conditions eschew the use of a facilitator, arguing that attempting to facili-
tate conversations reduces the quality of the conversations. Instead, World Café
attempts to create a container for productive conversations by using the image of a
host and etiquette and by prescribing a number of other unique enabling conditions,
like the creation of hospitable space and tables covered in blank paper with colored
crayons for doodling (Brown & Issacs, 2005).
Another similarity in many of these newer forms of OD is the underlying shared
assumption, implicit or explicit, that creating new images, stories, texts, narratives,
and other socially constructed realities will affect how people think and make sense
of things and that, in turn, will affect how they act and, ultimately, organizational
performance. Amodeo and Cox (in press) described their “systemic sustainability”
Dialogic OD practice as a “conscious intent to engage the whole system in dialogue
and synergistic relationships in such a way that: mental models are surfaced; new
knowledge, structures, processes, practices, and stories are collaboratively created
and shared; and diverse stakeholder voices and perspectives are heard.” This may be
a more profound difference from the diagnostic form of OD than might at first
appear. In the diagnostic form, the OD consultant helps bring externally validated
new thinking to the system about things like job design, team work, and communica-
tion. In the dialogic approaches, the focus is on eliciting new thinking in the targets
of change themselves—new thinking that is not prescribed by the OD practitioner or
action research team but new thinking that emerges individually and collectively
from going through the dialogic change process itself.
In summary, we propose a set of four characteristics for categorizing Dialogic OD
practice as shown in Table 3. First, Dialogic OD change processes emphasize chang-
ing the normal, everyday conversations that take place in the system (Barrett et al,
1995). This can be done in a variety of ways, including changing who normally takes
part in these conversations, changing how people have these conversations, chang-
ing conversational patterns (Ford & Ford, 2008), changing the skills people bring to
these conversations (Bushe, 2009) and by changing the framings and content of what
the conversations are about (Marshak & Grant, 2008). Secondly, there may or may
not be a data collection phase, but when there is, there is seldom the assumption
that an objective reality or set of facts exist to be discovered or discerned. Instead,
processes of inquiry are used to surface, legitimate, and/or learn from the variety of
realties that exist in the system. In short, there is no attempt to objectively diagnose
the system per se. Third, the aim is to generate new images, stories, narratives, and
socially constructed realities that affect how people in the system think and act. The
focus is not on the behavior to be changed but on changing intersubjective reality
362   The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science

Table 3
Basic, Shared Characteristics of Dialogic Organization
Development Practices
The change process emphasizes changing the conversations that normally take place in the system.
The purpose of inquiry is to surface, legitimate, and/or learn from the variety of perspectives, cultures,
   and/or narratives in the system.
The change process results in new images, narratives, texts, and socially constructed realities that affect
   how people think and act.
The change process is consistent with traditional organization development values of collaboration, free
   and informed choice, and capacity building in the client system.

and cognitive maps with the assumption that this will lead to new behavior. Finally,
Dialogic OD is consistent with traditional OD values of collaborative decision mak-
ing, giving people the opportunity to freely make informed choices and using the
change process to develop and build capacity in the system.

Implications for Organization Development

Presently, OD practitioners and scholars discuss the theory and practice of orga-
nization development as if it is a single entity based on a common set of premises
and beliefs. This is no longer a useful assumption and will be problematic for
advancing theory and practice if the differing underlying philosophical and theoreti-
cal premises are not recognized. Based on the ideas discussed here, a fully articulated
and legitimated Dialogic OD would be self-consciously based in constructionist and
interpretive approaches in the social sciences. These newer forms of OD attempt to
construct dialogic containers and methods of collective inquiry that directly affect
consciousness or mindsets or prevailing belief systems more than behavior. They
promote inquiry-based methods to encourage large and small groups to increase col-
lective self-awareness and productive conversations. Their core methodologies are
based more on generative and constructionist social and symbolic interaction rather
than on problem solving and positivist action research.

Implications for Researchers

The theoretical basis of Dialogic OD needs to be more finely enunciated. Currently,
those who promote Dialogic OD practices differ greatly in how much attention they
pay to the epistemological and ontological premises from which they operate, and
no unifying theory of change has been offered (which may be a good thing). There
appears to be a rather large gulf between academics who study change from narra-
tive and interpretive premises and OD practitioners who use dialogical methods. The
former tend to provide intellectually coherent discourses that often don’t seem to
provide much leverage for managers and change agents (e.g., Dawson & Buchanan,
 Bushe, Marshak / Revisioning Organization Development   363

2005; Hardy, Lawrence, & Grant, 2005; Heracleous & Barrett, 2001; Reissner,
2005). Practitioners, like most of those reviewed here, provide useful techniques
but not always coherent theoretical frameworks. Bringing these disparate worlds of
organizational change together would be extremely useful for furthering scholar-
ship in OD.
Studies of the processes and impacts of Dialogic OD need to take place. There
is only a handful of published studies of appreciative inquiry and even less of Open
Space, World Café, the technology of participation, collaborative loops, reflexive
consulting, various discursive change processes, or systemic sustainability. The
change claims of their proponents need to be examined and the results compared to
those achieved using more classical, diagnostic approaches.
Because creating enabling conditions for different kinds of conversations to take
place seems to be a key differentiator amongst the dialogical practices, this seems
like an excellent area for OD scholars to investigate. What are the best enabling
conditions? How are they created? What is the OD consultant’s role in creating these?
How, if at all, do T-group and process consultation skills support Dialogic OD? How
do people best go from conversation to action? How does the design of enabling
conditions affect the degree of change that ensues? Under what conditions are diag-
nostic or dialogic approaches the most appropriate intervention and most likely to
succeed? Which practices can be usefully combined and which impede each other?
These are just a few of the questions that cry out for more study once researchers
acknowledge dialogic approaches as a differentiated set of methodologies worthy of
their own research and development agendas.

Implications for Practitioners

As OD practitioners and educators, we believe differentiating the philosophical
premises underlying diagnostic and dialogic practices would also be beneficial to
practitioners. It would help provide a deeper and more coherent grounding to what is
sometimes a confusing mix of classic orthodoxies and newer intervention practices. It
would increase their ability to understand the basic assumptions from which they oper-
ate and help practitioners think more deeply about innovations in their own practice.
This would not only enable more reflective and coherent practice, it would help
clarify needed intervention competencies with underlying change premises. Presumably,
diagnostic approaches might require greater competencies in positivist data collec-
tion and analysis methods as well as project group facilitation skills, whereas dia-
logic approaches might benefit from greater skills in establishing and facilitating
dialogic containers and generative conversations.
Importantly, greater clarity and differentiation could also help avoid unknowing
mixing and matching of diagnostic and dialogic practices that in combination may
be inappropriate, out of alignment, or even counterproductive. For example, Bushe’s
(in press; Bushe & Kassam, 2005) research suggests that using appreciative inquiry
techniques while operating within the premises of what we are calling Diagnostic
OD reduces the success of appreciative inquiry.
364   The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science

Implications for Teaching OD

Currently, students of OD are beset with a monolithic theory base that does not
seem to adequately encompass or differentiate the variety of technologies, especially
more recent technologies, of developmental change. Being able to provide clear dif-
ferences in the theoretical bases to the variety of practices would go a long way to
eliminating the confusion this creates.
Specifically, we think those who write OD textbooks need to stop squeezing all
OD practice into the classical OD action research model (e.g., Brown & Harvey,
2005; Cummings & Worley, 2009; J. C. Jackson, 2006; McLean, 2005) and explic-
itly recognize that fostering greater awareness in a system is not always the same
thing as objective and formal data collection and diagnosis facilitated or conducted
by an external consultant. Indeed, among those who study and write about action
research, alternative premises have shaped newer practices (Reason & Bradbury,
2001). If our argument is plausible, then there is also a need to catalog current OD
practices that fit our definition of Dialogic OD so that we can start talking about it,
assessing it, and learning from it. Those who have recently described the death knell
for OD might consider that what they are seeing is a world in which the traditional
Diagnostic OD model is perhaps challenged but in which new forms of OD are
emerging that are positioned to make a difference. For everyone, it might be liberat-
ing to have a plurality of differentiated premises rather than implicitly talking and
writing as if everything is more or less the same.
In differentiating types of OD, we caution that it is not necessarily the tool that
determines what kind of OD is being practiced as much as it is the premises behind
how the tool is used. For example, one might appear to use an interpretive, dialogic
orientation but still do so within a traditional OD framework of diagnosis and inter-
vention (e.g., Heracleous & Marshak, 2004; Schein, 1992). Dialogic OD approaches
will not attempt to diagnose systems so much as attempt to create events and con-
tainers where organizational members can increase their awareness of the variety of
experiences in the system and how social reality is being coconstructed in their sys-
tem with the purpose of creating alignment and support for change.
Clearly, a range of competencies and skills in addition to, and sometimes instead
of, the classic lists of OD consultant competencies will be needed by Dialogic OD
consultants. Articulating these skills and competencies as well as the underlying philo-
sophical and theoretical premises will be needed to add them to textbooks, curricu-
lums, and training programs. The beginning of such a list can be discerned in Eisen,
Cherbeneau, and Worley (2005).
We hope those engaged in scholarly practice and practical scholarship will con-
sciously explore the implications of these newer premises and practices for OD. One
of the strengths of classical, Diagnostic OD is the solid philosophical base on which
it rests. It behooves contemporary OD scholars working with dialogical methods to
articulate the philosophical bases for Dialogic OD. We can be testing alternative
 Bushe, Marshak / Revisioning Organization Development   365

theories in practice, looking for where the theory fits with OD and managerial expe-
rience. We can be creating and trying out practical applications from the findings of
organizational researchers working from alternative premises and sharing these
experiments through journal publications. This may lead us to be able to describe
under what conditions Diagnostic OD is most appropriate and when dialogic forms
are more appropriate for effective change and development of organizations.

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Gervase R. Bushe is an associate professor at the Segal Graduate School of Business, Simon Fraser
University, and the president of Clear Learning Ltd.

Robert J. Marshak is scholar in residence for the AU/NTLMSOD Program in the School of Public
Affairs at American University, and maintains a global consulting practice.