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The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the developmental needs of managers operating in continuous change contexts. Special attention is drawn to communicative competences through the use of Kent and Taylor's five principles of dialogic communication. A case study is used to illustrate the communicative challenges in creating a learning organization.

The research uses longitudinal case study methodology and provides details on the multiple methods used, specifically: participant observation, focus groups, and document analysis.

Findings suggest that existing management development literature needs to reconceptualise change communication as communication during change, rather than to communicate the change. In so doing attention is drawn to the power of communicative expectations and communicative competence. Successful transformation to a learning organization is hampered by a misalignment of the employee's communicative expectations and management delivery of change communication.

Whilst single case studies can be criticized for a lack of generalisability, the use of multiple methods and a longitudinal study bolsters the rigor and validity of this study. Management development needs were not formally addressed in this case study, and thus it is difficult to offer prescriptive statements to improving communicative competences.

The field study provided ample opportunity to identify change management development needs, and reflect on how to bolster an often difficult area of change management, communication during change.

This research provides in‐depth empirical data from an organization attempting to transform to a learning organization. In prior studies the communicative theoretical framework is rarely tested, and this paper provides evidence of the communicative theoretical applicability. This contribution is extended to management development needs.

Little has been studied yet in terms of how communication nature influences change process. The purpose of this paper is to explore a case study that takes part in a broader research project, aimed to contribute in this direction.

Mix methodology has been applied to the findings, to characterize resistance to change and communication nature within one organization under a radical change process.

One main theoretical contribution is an instrumental grid to characterize dialogic communication nature.

Findings of the case study originally indicate that resistance to change reduces under dialogic communication and by revealing how communication dimensions perform in time, practitioners may enhance guidelines to effective change communication management.

The purpose of the research was to discover the process of social and environmental report assurance (SERA) and thereby evaluate the benefits, extent of stakeholder inclusivity and/or managerial capture of SERA processes and the dynamics of SERA as it matures.

This paper used semi‐structured interviews with 20 accountant and consultant assurors to derive data, which were then coded and analysed, resulting in the identification of four themes.

This paper provides interview evidence on the process of SERA, suggesting that, although there is still managerial capture of SERA, stakeholders are being increasingly included in the process as it matures. SERA is beginning to provide dual‐pronged benefits, adding value to management and stakeholders simultaneously. Through the lens of Freirian dialogic theory, it is found that SERA is starting to display some characteristics of a dialogical process, being stakeholder inclusive, demythologising and transformative, with assurors perceiving themselves as a “voice” for stakeholders. Consequently, SERA is becoming an important mechanism for driving forward more stakeholder‐inclusive SER, with the SERA process beginning to transform attitudes of management towards their stakeholders through more stakeholder‐led SER. However, there remain significant obstacles to dialogic SERA. The paper suggests these could be removed through educative and transformative processes driven by assurors.

Previous work on SERA has involved predominantly content‐based analysis on assurance statements. However, this paper investigates the details of the SERA process, for the first time using qualitative interview data.

This duoethnography explores feelings of belonging that emerged as being relevant to the participants of a doctoral organisational change study. It challenges the prolific change management models that inadvertently encourage anti-belonging.

A change management practitioner and her doctoral supervisor share their dialogic reflections and reflexivity on the case study to open new conversations and raise questions about how communicating belonging enhances practice. They draw on Ubuntu philosophy (Tutu, 1999) to enrich Pinar's currere (1975) for understandings of belonging, interconnectedness, humanity and transformation.

The authors show how dialogic practice in giving employees a voice, communicating honestly, using inclusive language and affirmation contribute to a stronger sense of belonging. Suppressing the need for belonging can deepen a communication shadow and create employee resistance and alienation. Sharing in each other's personal transformation, the authors assist others in better understanding the feelings of belonging in organisational change.

Practitioners will need to challenge change initiatives that ignore belonging. This requires thinking of people as relationships, rather than as numbers or costs, communicating dialogically, taking care with language in communicating changes and facilitating employees to be active participants where they feel supported.

For both practice and academy, this duoethnography highlights a need for greater humanity in change management practices. This requires increasing the awareness and understanding of an interconnectedness that lies at the essence of belonging or Ubuntu (Tutu, 1999).

The purpose of this paper is to delineate lessons for business schools seeking re-accreditation and that face previous peer-review improvement expectations, strategic and operational imperatives similar to those faced at College of Business Administration (CBA) in University of the State Capital, all pseudonyms to mask their true identity.

Based on qualitative case study method, CBA’s Assessment Director, Gabriel Mouton, again a pseudonym, serves as the central protagonist whose interactive dialogical and technology-enabled change processes provide instructive practical lessons around the management of assurance of learning (AoL) for re-accreditation.

This paper offers a tripartite change focus in AoL for re-accreditation: balancing program goal integration with discipline differentiation, adopting an interactive dialogical shared governance process over a top-down or bottom-up process and technology-enabled straddling program depth and breadth.

This paper is unique to CBA’s path-historical institutional change experiences in the USA with rich-shared faculty governance that may need to be first developed before emulation in institutions where such a tradition is absent.

The experiences narrated in this paper offer universal lessons for business schools aspiring to continuously improve their AoL and, in the process, uphold program meaning and quality standards for stakeholder relevance and re-accreditation.

The experiences narrated in this paper offers lessons for tying program quality to external stakeholders’ expectations in the community, including for international business schools.

This paper advances an original tripartite change focus specifically relevant for business schools seeking re-accreditation and that are concurrently grappling with multiple strategic and operational imperatives.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a meta-model of organizational change that allows to look at change from different angles. This meta-model starts from the idea that there are different discourses about organizational change, each having their own merits but also their own limitations. Bringing these discourses together into an integrated systems model allows the authors to capture the essence of organizational change a lot better.

This model is designed based on a literature review of organizational theories, systems theories related to theories of organizational change and specific theories about organizational change.

The literature review resulted in a systems model of organizational change that is better able to grasp the complexity of change than linear models.

This model goes beyond the usual change models from the normative discourse and provides a multidimensional view on organizational change.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to discussions about engagement in social and environmental accounting, drawing on dialogic theory and philosophy. A dialogic approach, building on existing critical inquiries, is introduced to derive principles to inform “on the ground” engagements. Applying dialogic thinking to social and environmental accounting encourages the development of dialogic forms of accountability, more authentic engagements and is more likely to contribute to sustainable social and environmental change.

Contains a synthesis of literature from within and beyond social and environmental accounting to shed light on the issues addressed by the special issue.

Research engagements in social and environmental accounting need not be taken in a haphazard manner uninformed by theory. In particular, the “learning turn” in social sciences has generated a large body of theorizing (informed by concrete engagement activities) that can be used to shape, guide and support engagement.

The principles developed can be used to inform future research design, with the aim of increasing the likelihood that such engagements will yield outcomes of “value” usually defined as emancipatory changes.

This paper develops a new (to accounting) theoretical perspective.

The purpose is to understand the manner in which companies use management accounting and control systems (MACS) for dialogical communication in assisting collaboration and the coordination of actions. The task of the research is to answer the following questions: why is it important to support dialogical communication by MACS in the organisation? Who are the salient stakeholder(s) in a company implementing collaboration and cooperation? How does one analyse and understand the role of MACS as a medium for supporting dialogical communication? Which aspects of dialogical communication are (not) fulfilled in the implementation of MACS and why?

This study's philosophical assumptions are based on relational constructivism as a social science perspective. This study uses a participative action and observation case study as its methodology.

Based on this case study, it can be concluded that most of the assumptions that dialogue could take place were fulfilled in departments in need of changes for competition and economic reasons. In the departments that did not need changes, assumptions of mutual openness, mutual confirmation and non-manipulation were not fulfilled – information from MACS was hidden and censored. The open dialogue by MACS between ground and senior groups was prevented resulting in a lack of information on different practices at the organisational level. One assumption that was problematic even in departments in need of changes was the assumption of non-evaluation. There is a paradox or contradiction between the contemporary business environment needing innovativeness and creativity, which means free and open communication without evaluation, and the coordination and control function which is a common part of MACS.

In this study, the data collection, documentation and analysis were carefully conducted and several methods applied to deal with possible bias. Nevertheless, the problem of the observer bias cannot be entirely eliminated since an individual researcher can never be separated from his or her background, philosophical views and experiences.

The paper makes a strong practical contribution. Based on this case study, it has been demonstrated that MACS could be a medium to support dialogue between senior and ground levels if: senior management sees the need for dialogue between organisational members; management and other organisational members support and believe in dialogue which could be mediated by MACS.

The conceptual novelty of the research lies in tying the concept of dialogue in the environment of stakeholder capitalism with the MACS framework. The contribution of this research is to shed more light on the role of MACS as one option of mediums for supporting dialogue between top and ground-level managers.

The purpose of this paper is to review the current research program in agonistic dialogic accounting and to reflect on future possibilities for broadening out and opening up accounting and accountability systems, especially as they relate to social and environmental accounting (SEA).

The authors describe an ethic of accountability as a context for dialogue and debate intended to broaden out and open up new imaginings of accounting for democracy. The authors review the accounting literature addressing dialogic accounting and agonistics as the precursor of what has evolved into agonistic dialogic accounting. The authors discuss their work to date on agonistic pluralism and engagement, recognizing the necessity of linking the normative framework to an effective political program. The authors review prior studies applying science and technology studies that have addressed these issues.

The authors consider how the application of agonistic ideas might facilitate the development of multiple accountings that take pluralism seriously by addressing constituencies and perspectives often marginalized in both SEA and mainstream accounting. An ethic of accountability and science and technology studies are useful for stimulating dialogue and debate regarding democratic and civil society institutions as they relate to economic entities, especially corporations.

Agonistic dialogic accounting in conjunction with other disciplines such as science and technology studies can be used in formulating, implementing and evaluating policy for advancing a progressive social agenda.

A reflective view of the current work in agonistic dialogic accounting highlights considerations for further research regarding the possible interdisciplinary work particularly with science and technology studies in broadening out and opening up accounting and accountability systems as facilitators of progressive social agenda.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of a dialogical approach, associated with the Russian literary critic and philosopher Bakhtin, in understanding the portrayal of managerial identity in management narratives. In particular, it applies these ideas critically to understand how managers' identities are partly shaped by the dominant discourse or idea about what a manager should “be.”

The paper draws on three written narratives of managers. It applies a dialogical approach to consider how they position themselves interactionally in the narratives in such a way as to highlight a managerial identity based on being “enterprising” and “for change,” while simultaneously voicing alternative identities negatively. The use of the written narratives of managers and the application of a dialogical approach is an important contribution to the literature.

The findings suggest that managers, when reflecting on organizational events through narrative, assume a managerial identity that reflects current dominant discourse about what a manager should “be.” In doing so they reject other possible discourses that offer alternatives, not only to managerial “being,” but also to what management and organizations might reflect and represent. The paper also, however, recognizes that some managers reject this identity and its implications for organizational activity.

The paper suggests that managerial identity is partly a product of a dominant discursive/ideological formation rather than individual choice. Although managers may reject this interpellation creating an alternative is constrained by the regime of truth that prevails about what management is at any given time. The approach might be considered overly deterministic in its view of managerial identity.

The paper extends the understanding of managerial identity and how it is portrayed through narrative by using a dialogical approach to interpretation.