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The purpose of this practice note is to describe the use of the issue‐based information system (IBIS) notation to map dialogues that occur in project meetings.

A case study is used to illustrate how the technique works. A discussion highlighting the key features, benefits and limitations of the method is also presented along with a comparison of IBIS to other similar notations.

IBIS is seen to help groups focus on the issues at hand, bypassing or avoiding personal agendas, personality clashes and politics.

The technique can help improve the quality of communication in projects meetings. The case study highlights how the notation can assist project teams in developing a consensus on contentious issues in a structured yet flexible way.

IBIS has not been widely used in project management. This note illustrates its value in helping diverse stakeholders get to a shared understanding of the issues being discussed and a shared commitment to achieving them.

The early stages of projects are often characterised by ambiguity arising from differences in stakeholder views regarding project rationale and objectives. The purpose of this paper is to present a viewpoint on how to build a shared understanding of project goals and thus reach a shared commitment to achieving them. One of the ways to achieve shared understanding is through open dialogue, free from political and other constraints. The authors call an environment that fosters such dialogue a holding environment. The main aim is to illustrate, via a case study: how an alliance‐based approach to projects can foster a holding environment; and how argument visualisation tools such as IBIS (Issue‐Based Information System) can be used to clarify different points of view and options within such an environment.

Following a discussion of theoretical background and literature review, an alliancing case study is used to illustrate the development of a holding environment and demonstrate the utility of IBIS in the creation of such an environment.

It is seen that an alliance‐based approach to projects can provide the foundation for a holding environment. IBIS is seen to facilitate the building of shared understanding by making arguments explicit and capturing decision rationale.

The paper outlines a practical framework for improving the quality of dialogue and achieving stakeholder commitment on projects.

Achieving shared understanding and commitment to action is difficult, particularly in the early stages of projects. The paper outlines the conditions and techniques needed to facilitate this via a non‐trivial case study.

To conceptualize and theorize dialogue's diagnostic as well as generative functions for strategic innovation and organizational change.

Conceptual development with case illustration.

Strategic innovation requires shifts in existing mental models of organizational actors that underlie the overall strategy paradigm of a firm. Dialogue as a form of reflective conversation enables actors to alter managers' mental models through conscious, critical exploration.

Conceptual framework introduces reflective dialogue, as a crucial processual element for encouraging shifts in mental maps and as a necessary, but not sufficient condition for strategy innovation; provides an analytical framework for enhancing understanding of the emergent processes of strategic innovation, and for studying shifts in organizational actors' mental models.

Provides organizational change agents and strategists with perspectives and frameworks for appreciating and fostering reflective dialogue in the context of strategic thinking and innovation.

Concept of reflective dialogue and associated frameworks link micro‐levels and macro‐levels of strategy innovation and address critical process elements.

Managers are increasingly presented with complex, ambiguous decision problems that affect multiple stakeholder groups. Such problems cannot be tackled solely by classical approaches that prescribe rational methods to weigh evidence and select an optimal course of action. Yet most courses on decision making still focus on these methods. This paper draws attention to the complementary nature of rational decision making and sensemaking techniques in management decision making, and describes a practical pedagogy that demonstrates how the two can be integrated into management curricula.

Based on an in-depth review of relevant research, the authors propose a conceptual model that highlights the complementary nature of rational and sensemaking methods for making decisions relating to complex and ambiguous problems. They then describe a course on decision making as an illustration of how the model can inform decision making pedagogy.

Decision makers need to think of their decision problems in terms of two distinct types of uncertainty: those for which uncertainty can be quantified and those for which it cannot. When faced with the latter, decisions are best made by working with relevant stakeholders to collectively frame the problem using practical sensemaking tools prior to applying rational decision making techniques to address it. Decision making under ambiguity is an iterative, social process requiring a combination of rational decision making methods and sensemaking techniques.

The paper seeks to increase awareness about the complementary nature of sensemaking and rational decision making. It emphasizes the need to integrate the two in management curricula and provides details on how this can be done via an example of a course implemented at an Australian Business School. The techniques described will also be of interest to practitioners.

The paper describes a practical pedagogy that blends rational decision making and collective sensemaking techniques in a way that fosters managers’ decision making skills in contexts characterized by ambiguity.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the evolving nature of the accountability relationship between a group of Irish non‐governmental development organisations (NGDOs) and their primary governmental funder.

The examination is undertaken in the context of a unique funder‐led initiative to instil a broad social accountability focus among NGDOs while re‐orienting the NGDO‐funder accountability dynamic towards a partnership‐based approach – whereby the accountability entity would effectively be a supra‐organisation comprising the funder and the NGDOs. The empirical content of the paper is derived from a series of in‐depth interviews with senior individuals working within the Irish NGDO sector, along with a comprehensive analysis of documentary sources.

The partnership rhetoric central to promoting the enhanced focus on social accountability across the “virtual” accountability supra‐organisation has not been transformed into reality, and the NGDO‐funder accountability relationship within the supra‐organisation remains centred on control and justification. A lack of resources, organisational commitment, guidance, and expertise from the governmental funder has contributed to an attitude of scepticism among many NGDOs towards both the partnership rhetoric and the accompanying adoption of the central tenets of social accountability, particularly downward accountability to beneficiaries.

The research is based on a detailed analysis in a specific context which may limit its wider applicability. Nevertheless, it adds insights to the developing academic literature on NGO accountability, with particular reference to their broader social accountabilities.

Although highly context‐specific, the findings of the study will be useful to researchers and policy makers interested in understanding how NGDO‐funder accountability relationships can move towards mutual accountability and genuine partnerships focused on promoting social accountability.

Very few in‐depth academic examinations of the evolving nature of NGDO‐funder accountability relationships in specific NGO contexts have emerged in the accountability literature. Many of the insights in this paper are derived from individuals inside organisations in the NGDO sector who are regularly addressing issues of accountability, both social and otherwise. This provides in‐depth, highly‐informed insider perspectives on the evolving nature of these relationships, especially in the context of attempts to promote more partnership‐based approaches to the delivery of development aid.

The paper aims to explore themes in Drucker's work which provide messages for current turbulent times. Based on a literature review of both Drucker's work and contemporary studies in the field of complexity theory the paper's aim is to explore turbulence as a feature of levels of agreement for objectives and predictability of outcome. Drucker's concept of management as a social enterprise is seen as central together with his warning that the tools and techniques of management should not obscure its purpose.

The paper provides a literature review and a brief case study. The review identifies that contemporary complexity theory can be used to explore Drucker's work on turbulence. The case study shows how approaches based on dialogue can enable conflicting objectives to be explored and agreed outcomes achieved.

The paper concludes that in turbulent times Drucker's concept of management as a social enterprise forms a core framework that can be used within complex situations to agree objectives through dialogue.

This paper uniquely links Drucker's work with contemporary complexity theory.

With the rapid development in the internet technologies, the applications of big data in construction have seen considerable attention. Currently, there are many input/output modes of capturing construction knowledge related to all construction stages. On the other hand, building information modelling (BIM) systems have been developed to help in storing various structured data of buildings. However, these systems cannot fully capture the knowledge and unstructured data used in the operation of building systems in a usable format that uses the intelligent capabilities of BIM systems. Therefore, this research aims to adopt the concept of big data and develop a spoken dialogue BIM system to capture buildings operation knowledge, particularly for building maintenance and refurbishment.

The proposed system integrates cloud-based spoken dialogue system and case-based reasoning BIM system.

The system acts as an interactive expert agent that seeks answers from the user for questions specific to building maintenance problems and helps searching for solutions from previously stored knowledge cases. The practices of monitoring and maintaining buildings performance can be more efficient by the retrieval of relevant solutions from the captured knowledge to new problems when maintaining buildings components. The developed system enables easier capture and search for solutions to new problems with a more comprehensive retrieval of information.

Capturing multi-modes data into BIM systems using the cloud-based spoken dialogue systems will help construction teams use the high volume of data generated over building lifecycle and search for the most suitable solutions for maintenance problems. This new area of research also contributes to the current BIM systems by advancing their capabilities to instantly capture and retrieve knowledge of operations instead of only information.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the development of definitional standards for research information as a wicked problem. A central solution strategy for such problems, increasing transparency by argumentation visualisation, is being evaluated.

Qualitative formal content analysis is used in order to examine whether the process of definition standardisation in the project can be characterised as a wicked problem. Action Research is used to assess the effect of argumentation visualisation in the project.

The results of the content analysis confirm the interpretation of the standardisation process as a wicked problem. The implementation of argumentation visualisation shows to increase the meetings’ focus and effectiveness.

The relationship between information exchange, transparency and acceptance of the development result should be addressed in future empirical analyses. Visualisation solutions require further development in order to accommodate needs of the stakeholders.

Argumentation visualisation is of high value for finding a consensus for definitional standards and should be considered for managing and exchanging information.

Applying solution strategies from design research on wicked problems to large-scale standardisation efforts opens up new possibilities for not only handling such projects but also providing new avenues of research for both the design and research information communities.