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This chapter explores how “discourse,” as a process concerned with the production and consumption of talk and text, has been embraced within the field of organizational change and development (OCD). We present six ways of thinking about the role of discourse in OCD (namely: “discourse as component,” “discourse as process,” “discourse as analysis,” “discourse as method,” “discourse as mindset,” and “discourse as style”). Although the advent of dialogic OD has raised awareness of discourse, we demonstrate that it remains a marginal and under-utilized area of interest. We conclude by making a case for a more expansive role for discursive modes of analysis and engagement within OCD.

Extending the argument made in Bushe and Marshak (2009) of the emergence of a new species of Organization Development (OD) that we label Dialogic, to differentiate it from the foundational Diagnostic form, we argue that how any OD method is used in practice will be depend on the mindset of the practitioner. Six variants of Dialogic OD practice are reviewed and compared to aid in identification of a Weberian ideal-type Dialogic Mindset, consisting of eight premises that distinguish it from the foundational Diagnostic Mindset. Three core change processes that underlie all successful Dialogic OD processes are proposed, and suggestions for future research offered.

This chapter flips innovation on its head. Instead of validating our ideas in the market, why not facilitate a market already motivated to change to do so. Theoretical and empirical evidence is presented to support this theory, along with tools and techniques enabling Innovation Leaders to deliver radical change. Three case studies are shared showing how successful innovation leaders have researched and developed opportunities for radical innovation.

The continued move toward high-stakes accountability has significant consequences for public schools located within communities occupied by historically marginalized populations, as the majority of chronically low-performing (CLP) schools are housed within metropolitan areas where students of color are the primary population (Noguera & Wells, 2011). Consequently, over the course of the last decade, college- and university-based educational leadership preparation programs have been placed on the defensive (Cibulka, 2009; Goldring & Schuermann, 2009), as school leaders and those who prepare them are being increasingly held accountable for the significant escalation in the number of CLP schools. With such issues as the contextual backdrop, the purpose of this chapter is to further examine two issues critical to the field of educational leadership preparation: the need for leadership preparation programs to develop and provide curricula and pedagogical offerings that better prepare leaders to serve within diverse communities, and the potentiality of using Q-methodology as an evaluative instrument in the reformation efforts of educational leadership preparation programs attempting to better equip school leaders for diverse contexts.

This chapter examines the tensions inherent in conceptions of social justice as they relate to educational administrator preparation programs. In order to determine how social justice is conceptualized in K-12 administrator preparation in Ontario, Canada, we conduct a document analysis of publicly available information related to provincial leadership preparation programs. We identify an ideological bias toward managerial and transformational leadership paradigms which favor externally mandated outcomes that unintentionally reinstate hierarchical management paradigms and democratic forms of racism (Henry, Tator, Mattis, & Rees, 2000). Drawing on critical democratic and antiracist literature and our own research and practice, we propose an approach to leadership preparation that can support diversity and transformative praxis while working within a mandated transformational paradigm.