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The purpose of this study is to describe the construction of leadership through authentic dialogues at work and leaders’ actions as contributors to dialogic leadership.

The authors collected the data by recording the organisation’s meetings and discussions and used content analysis of dialogic leadership and typifying of critical moments as analytical methods.

On the basis of the findings, this paper suggests that dialogic leadership begins with a startup critical moment and progresses through the different positions by manager and employees through democratic interaction. Individual and collective level learning of participants and the formation of new knowledge were used in decision- or conclusion-making. The manager promoted the construction of dialogic leadership in conversation by creating important critical moments, which enabled a dialogue to start or contributed to already ongoing dialogue.

The study proposes concrete actions that can be applied in working life. This study provides a new understanding of the leader’s activities in promoting dialogue.

Building on social exchange theory and relational leadership theory, this paper proposes a model of inclusive leadership in higher education institutions. Together with an attempt to examine the impact of inclusive leadership on extra-role behaviors of academic staff, the paper aims to test the intervening mechanism of organizational learning among the aforementioned relationships.

Data were collected from 227 academic staff working in the Palestinian higher education institutions. Partial least squares (PLS-SEM) analysis technique was utilized to examine the hypotheses.

The findings reveal that inclusive leadership exerts a positive effect on extra-role behaviors (organizational citizenship behaviors and innovative work behaviors) in the Palestinian higher education setting. Moreover, the findings show that organizational learning plays a significant mediating role among the relationships examined

Academic communities are increasingly diverse. This diversity requires a work environment in which employees take on additional work roles. In response to this diversity, managers of higher education institutions should be concerned about the roles and practices of inclusive leaders. In addition, higher education institutions need to be learning organizations since this would help to mitigate this diversity and create a working atmosphere characterized by continuous learning, collaboration and dialogue.

In higher education, most of the literature on inclusive academic leadership is mainly theoretical. Furthermore, organizational learning in higher education research is based on anecdotal perspectives (Dee and Leišyte, 2016). To this end, this paper is novel, as it is one of few studies to empirically investigate inclusive leadership and extra-role behaviors via organizational learning in a non-western academic context.

The study begins by defining and conceptualizing Transformative Leadership Conversation (TLC). The conceptualization addresses the meaning of transformation, sensemaking and learning dialogue, and the conversation structures of framing, questioning and listening, and affirming. Next, the authors build a theoretical argument from self-determination theory on the function of TLC. The study concludes with an empirical test of the structure and function of TLC.

There were two parts to the empirical study. First, the authors designed and tested a scale to measure TLC by its structural features (e.g. questioning, listening and affirming language). Second, the authors used a correlational design with ex-post facto data to test the primary assumption that TLC activates autonomous motivation and action. Data came from a random sample of 2,500 teachers in a southwestern state. Useable responses were obtained from 1,615 teachers, for a response rate of 65%.

The empirical tests reveal that the 12-item and 6-item measure of the School Leader Transformative Conversation Scale present valid and reliable evidence on the frequent use of TLC. Consistent with the hypothesized model, TLC had a direct, positive relationship with teacher vitality. It also had a negative relationship with autonomy frustration and a positive indirect effect on teacher vitality by reducing the negative effect of autonomy frustration.

TLC advances a new conceptual lens to study school leadership as a discursive process. The concept opens lines of inquiry that have not yet been examined in school settings.

Dialogic peer coaching as leadership can enable teachers to influence each other's professional learning. The purpose of this paper is to shift the emphasis from the role associated with the designated title of leader to the purpose and relevance of teacher leadership in the context of dialogic peer coaching.

The research was undertaken as a small qualitative case study embedded in a school-based, teacher professional development project. Nine groups of peer coaches from five unrelated schools engaged in a formal process of collaborative inquiry over two years. Interview data from 13 volunteer teacher participants were analysed using the constant comparison method and themes determined.

The study revealed that there was growth in teacher leadership capabilities as they become dialogic peer coaches to each other.

Through their collaborative peer coaching dialogue teachers have the transformative space to articulate their thinking. They can engage in dialogic feedback where they are positioned as experts in their own practice.

The teachers in this study are positioned within communities of practice as co-constructers of knowledge and co-learners. On the basis of the findings the authors suggest that this can support the development of high capacity leadership in schools. This stance contrasts with a technicist approach to teacher professional learning in which teachers are situated as absorbers or recipients of knowledge constructed elsewhere.

The research reported in this paper addresses three key elements of leadership: individual development; collaboration or team development; and organisational development. It outlines a means by which teacher leadership can be strengthened to address these elements in schools.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to make the case, firstly, that democratic leadership, referred to as “leaderful practice,” should be the fundamental form of leadership that characterizes participatory organizational change. The parties affected by change are those engaged who seek to reflect upon their own tacit collective practices. Their mode of communication is a dialogue or deliberation that involves the responsible parties to decision making without privileging particular stakeholders because of their status or authority. Thus, it is purported, secondly, that the three practice elements of democratic leadership, dialogue, and deliberation should be included among the bedrock principles of participatory organizational change.

A critical conceptual examination is undertaken of the contribution of three alternative literature streams – leaderful practice, dialogue, deliberation – to participatory organizational change.

Dialogue, an authentic exchange between people, and its decision‐making cousin, deliberation, can become the communication modes associated with participatory organizational change. They are each characterized by equality of participation; thus they are inherently democratic processes that should substitute for top‐down or monologic discourses, which are inimical to participatory practice.

If organization development and comparable participatory change processes claim at their core to be democratic processes, their exponents would endorse a leadership and communication that would preferably match their value system. There would be a shared communication by all those who are involved in the change activity, wherever they may sit within the organizational bureaucracy. The communication would become a multiple‐party reflective conversation that is captured in the mode called dialogue.

By focusing on critical reflection, the dialogic perspective with its emancipatory interest challenges common sense assumptions that are likely to be historical and cultural as psychological. Ultimately, dialogue supports democratic leadership at a core interpersonal level in which participants learn to engage through a reflective practice that allows them to observe and experiment with their own collective tacit processes in action.

The purpose of this paper is to provide new and deeper insight into how creative knowledge processes are facilitated in multidisciplinary groups working with innovation in knowledge-intensive organizations.

Data were collected through an ethnographic fieldwork following two groups in a Norwegian oil and gas company and one group in a Norwegian research institute working with innovation. The analysis is inductive and conducted within a qualitative framework seeking to go deeper into the complexity of the facilitation of creative knowledge processes. The analytical framework is sociocultural and underscores how new knowledge and ideas are facilitated in the tension between different voices.

Analyses show how the leaders of the groups facilitated imaginative and creative processes through open dialog by giving room for diverse disciplinary knowledge and stimulating different roles in the groups. The diverse experiences of the occupational disciplines in addition to four complementary roles that ensured group dynamics, stimulated polyphony and creative tension in the groups. This creative tension enhanced the groups’ imagination, which again enabled innovative idea development.

This contribution is limited by looking at three groups in two organizations. On the premise that model generalization depends on extensive empirical data, the current paper should be considered as preliminary/exploratory research that aims at investigating how creative knowledge processes leading to innovative ideas are facilitated in knowledge-intensive organizations.

The paper offers a practical contribution in how leaders can facilitate such creative processes leading to innovative ideas. The paper is a contribution to leadership as a relational and dialogical practice.

The way the creative knowledge processes are orchestrated is visualized in a phase model. The paper contributes to new conceptualizations and thus theory development of leadership by offering polyphonic orchestration as a concept and a way of understanding facilitation from a sociocultural perspective.

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.