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The purpose of this paper is to examine two recent papers on Open Dialogue, an approach for people experiencing psychosis that involves people’s social networks from the beginning, and aims to empower the service user and their network to develop a shared view of what is happening and what to do.

A search was carried out for recent papers on Open Dialogue.

One paper reported on outcomes after an average of 20 years for people treated with Open Dialogue approach compared with usual treatment in Finland. Outcome was statistically significantly better for people who received Open Dialogue. A second paper reported on interviews with 20 people who had received Open Dialogue approach 20 years earlier. Participants told stories of life events and circumstances that caused accumulating stress leading to the mental health crisis. They gradually came through by their own actions and support from others. This may reflect how Open Dialogue emphasises personal agency and social support.

These are the first two papers to report on longer-term follow-up after Open Dialogue treatment. They continue to support the suggestion that Open Dialogue can be more beneficial than usual treatment. By including and working with people’s social networks, Open Dialogue may be particularly efficient at mobilising people’s social resources and empowering their personal agency.

This case was developed via primary data collected from personal (one to one) interview with the CEO and founder of Dialogue in the Dark Malaysia (Dialogue Malaysia), Stevens Chan. With Stevens’ contact, the authors also conducted personal interviews with Kaye Chan (co-founder and wife of Stevens Chan), Lynn Foo (project manager since inception until early 2022) and Dr Foo Yin Fah (academic researcher in social entrepreneurship and advisor for Dialogue Malaysia). Secondary data included reports on visually impaired context in Malaysia, Dialogue Malaysia’s annual reports and online articles. Prior to the primary data collection, the authors obtained ethics approval from the University Human Ethics Committee (Project ID: 35461).

This case narrative focuses on Stevens Chan, a blind social entrepreneur who champions the empowerment of the disabled and marginalised community. Through a social franchising model, Stevens founded Dialogue in the Dark Malaysia in 2012. As a social start-up, Stevens showcases the strengths of blind and visually impaired individuals through transformative experiential encounters and reimagining future possibilities. Although there are constant challenges in securing financial and human capital, Stevens never lacks psychological capital, characterised by hope, self-efficacy, optimism and resilience. His vision is to educate society on the power of empathy (and not sympathy) and to create a holistic experience of celebrating diversity and inclusion through an innovative discovery centre, where the elderly and the disabled community (including the deaf, mute and those with mobility issues) share their lives with the public through fun activities. However, the future of this social enterprise is uncertain, and this case invites participants to embark on this journey with Stevens to uncover future pathways for growth and social impact.

The case is tailored for higher level undergraduates and entry-level and mid-level managers of executive education programs.

This study aims to explore how multinational lead buyers can play an active role in ensuring worker voices in garment supplier factories where workers have limited space to raise their voices, and how buyers’ involvement increases the possibilities of worker voices mitigating barriers to social dialogues and enhancing mutual interests of buyers and workers in garment factories.

Using a qualitative research approach and multiple embedded case study method, this study considered buyer−supplier dyads as the unit of analysis, i.e. two multinational lead buyers and their four corresponding suppliers in the garment industry of Bangladesh. Focus group discussion and key informant in-depth interviews were techniques applied to collect factory-level data, and within and cross-case analysis techniques were applied to develop an overall understanding.

The results of this study reveal that the opportunities for workers to voice their concerns through social dialogue in garment supplier factories are limited due to various obstacles. Similarly, the role of multinational lead buyers in addressing these issues is found to be less than ideal. This study also shows that buyers can take short-term and long-term initiatives to ensure social dialogues. Moreover, this study presents how social dialogues can meet the expectations of multinational buyers and their garment suppliers.

While this study focuses exclusively on the garment industry, similar scenarios also exist across a multitude of other industries. Thus, future research could extend this study’s scope to various sectors, providing a more comprehensive understanding of the general state of worker voices in Bangladesh. This study stands to make significant contributions to literature in the fields of global value chains, human relations and international business. It will pose critical perspectives on how upstream value chain suppliers can fortify worker rights through social dialogue, and elucidate the means and motives for lead buyers to play a more active role in this endeavour.

This study is distinct in its approach, integrating buyer−supplier roles to pave the way for enhanced worker voice opportunities through social dialogue in garment supplier factories.

In attempts to defuse racial tensions on campus, higher education administrators have often commissioned special units and campus-wide initiatives. Historically, these commissions often address racial challenges in higher education that impact both faculty and students. If designed and deployed carefully, these commissions can be very useful mechanisms to address sensitive racial, religious, and linguistic concerns on campus. Despite the prevalence of studies that discuss racial experiences on campus, far less scholarship has focused on the effectiveness of these commissions and the dialogic strategies that faculty of color have employed in their service.

This study draws on three major findings. First, the chapter explores why the presidential commission structure is a powerful mechanism for improving dialogue about racial and ethnic issues on campus. Former commissioners discuss its potential for addressing the complex and interlocking concerns of faculty, staff, and students of color. Second, although the commission’s structure is promising, we present numerous problems that require further attention. We discuss how the emphasis on dialogue and less dedication to targeted actions and policies may actually undermine the goals of commissions like these and further frustrate aggrieved faculty, staff, and students. Third, the chapter highlights successful and unsuccessful strategies for sustaining fruitful dialogue that lead to an increased understanding and acceptance of diverse viewpoints and perspectives. These findings have specific relevance for international faculty and faculty of color interested in ways to be more proactive in shaping existing programs, policies, and approaches to meet the diverse needs of university life.

The use of dialogues within and across organizations is on the rise. This increase is a tacit acknowledgement of the relational foundations from which new meaning is created and social innovations emerge. However, coming together for a dialogue doesn’t assure constructive conversation or transformative engagement. Dialogue participants, even when they are asked to “suspend assumptions,” are generally still embedded in the mental models and familiar frameworks that distance them from one another and prevent real generativity and novelty.

This paper proposes Appreciative Inquiry as an approach particularly conducive to creating public dialogues that are generative and transformative. It suggests that a community is best served by inquiry into strengths, assets and past successes. It further proposes that this mode of inquiry tends to produce positive emotional states, which expand the resources and pro-social inclinations of those in the dialogue. It offers five conditions that support generative and transformative public dialogue and explains how Appreciative Inquiry creates these conditions.

Organizing is mainly a conversational process in which people together construct an organizational reality out of a variety of different positions from a more general organizational discourse. Generative dialogue refers to the differences between those positions, to the hidden potential of the in-between, and to the effort of handling these differences meaningfully and productively. At split second bifurcation points in a dialogue, fear and expanding learning opportunities are in mutual competition. In this chapter, we propose seven levels of dialoguing, with increasing generative potential and increasing difficulty. We propose “The Language of Change” (a framework) as a sensitizing device to co-construct richer, more applicable, and more valuable approaches to complex, dynamic, and unique change processes. I will conclude with some key principles to increase the level of generative dialoguing and some examples from my own practice.

In this chapter we are exploring Appreciative Inquiry within organizations through the dialogic process in its relational aspect. The present discussion is composed of four parts: An exploration of the myriad meanings of dialogue and a description of a useful orienting platform, dialogue as “discursive coordination.” We then turn to the pivotal function of dialogue in the organizing process and the development of a vocabulary of discursive action with practical consequences for effective organizing. We next turn to the problematic potentials of dialogue. A contrast between generative and degenerative dialogue enables us to explore how certain forms of coordination ultimately lead to organizational growth or demise. Among our conclusions we propose that dialogue originates in public, is a form of joint-action, is embodied and contextually embedded, as well as historically and culturally situated. Dialogue may serve both positive and negative ends. Described are four aspects of dialogue – an emphasis on affirmation, productive difference, coherence, and temporal integration. Appreciative inquiry adds an enormously important element to the transformative potentials of dialogue. Other transformative practices and potentials are also described.

This chapter discusses a form of pedagogy of reflection suggested to be defined as the dialogical-reflective professional-development school (DRPDS) – a framework that develops and empowers students by engaging them in a process of continual improvement, responding to diverse situations, providing stimuli for learning, and giving anchors for mediation. The pedagogy of reflection relates to dialogue not only from a theoretical historical context but also by way of example – that is, it offers empowering dialogues within the traditional teacher-training framework. This chapter outlines the importance of the pedagogy of reflection in the multicultural educational space of the preservice education field in Israel, analyzing the first university PDS model. The pedagogy of reflection in the context of the educational dialogue of educators is outlined as a tool for student empowerment, achieved through a community of learners who dedicate space to the development of their whole personality within the profession, taking a moral stance toward the educational discourse, minimizing judgmentalism and prejudice, creating national/gender equality with the goal of examining the fundamental question of educational performance, and reinforcing their sense of organizational belonging within the system. In these contexts, the chapter is based on the elements of dialogical philosophy exemplified in the thought of Burbules, Nelson, Isaacs, Bohm, and Heckmann and the reflective basis of educational and organizational performance exemplified in the writings of van Manen. The chapter also presents two examples from a project in which teaching units based on dialogue and reflection were developed within a dialogic community that represents in its very being collective empowerment, the possibility of coping with problems that are too large for an individual to solve on his/her own, and an alternative to sealed and alienated organizations.