Involvement as a dilemma: between dialogue and discussion in team based organizations

"This article describes an ongoing action research project in a public administration department working towards a more flat structure characterized by value-based management, team organization, and involvement. The article presents involvement as a multidimensional dilemma and describes how employees experience and cope with traditional and modern dilemmas, and how the borderline between them seems to be blurred. It also includes the AR-dilemma unfolding in the relation between the participants and us as actions researchers. The dilemmas are discussed in relation to Human Resource Management. The history of involvement is reflected as a historical transformation of participative democracy into participative management characterized by strategic communication." (author's abstract

Participation as Enactment of Power in Dialogic Organisational Action Research. Reflections on Conflicting Interests and Actionability

"The article focuses on participation as enactment of power in dialogic, organisational action research. The article has a dual purpose: It shows how participation is enacted as power in processes between participating managers, employees and action researchers with different or conflicting interests. It discusses if and eventually how it is possible to handle participatory processes when participation is conceptualised as enactment of power. This is done by reflecting critically on two examples from a dialogic, action research project carried out in two Danish, private organisations in 2008 and 2009. The overall perspective is to bring participation as enactment of power into the centre of dialogic, organisational action research processes and into action research that understands itself as participatory. The article argues in favour of understanding participation as enactment of power in a project work between different partners (employees, managers, and action researchers) with different interests. This argument is based on a definition of participation as co-determination of goals and means. Moreover, the article argues that combining reflexive and contextualised analyses from 1rst and 2nd person approaches with broader 3rd person action research perspectives might make dialogic, organisational action research projects more actionable. Theoretically, participatory processes aim at empowerment. The article shows that co-producing knowledge in dialogic, organisational action research implies ongoing reflections on tensions in the action research concept of ‘co-‘. In practice, these processes unfold in a field of tensions between empowerment and constraint." (author's abstract

Employee Driven Innovation in Team (EDIT) – Innovative Potential, Dialogue, and Dissensus

"The article deals with employee driven innovation in regular teams from a critical, pragmatic action research perspective, referring to theories on innovation, dialogue, workplace learning, and organizational communication. It is based on an action research project “Innovation and involvement through strengthening dialogue in team based organizations” funded by the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation. 18 teams from one public and two private organizations participated in the project. The article defines the concept of employee driven innovation (EDI) in relation to theories on innovation, workplace learning and action research, and presents EDI as a fairly new field of research. EDI is conceptualized as a participatory endeavour differing from a mainstream understanding of innovation as surplus value for the organization. The article focuses on incremental, organizational process innovations co-created across conflicting workplace interests in and between teams. The article argues that it is meaningful to assert that every employee has an innovative potential, no matter of what educational background or sector and that sometimes, this innovative potential might be facilitated through Dialogic Helicopter Team Meetings (DHTM) with a dissensus approach. During the action research process, it became important to organize a special kind of DHTMs as a supplement to ordinary team action meetings close to day-to-day operations, but separated in time and space. They focus on how to improve existing organizational routines and work practice in order to produce value for the organization, better work flow, and improved work life quality. These meetings are discussed in relation to similar organizational constructs within Scandinavian action research. The action research process made it clear that it is not enough to set up DHTMs if they are going to facilitate EDIT. They must be characterized by a dissensus approach, combining dissensus organizing and dissensus sensibility. Dissensus organizing means that team conversations must be organized in ways where silent or unspoken, critical voices speak up. This can be done by using, e.g., pro and con groups or a bystander. This demands, too, that team members, managers, and action researchers develop dissensus sensibility to open up for more voices, for indirect criticism, and for more democracy in the decision process trying to balance dialogues in multidimensional tensions between consensus and dissensus. The article grounds the complexities of this process in thick presentations of DHTMs in Team Product Support, Danfoss Solar Inverters and Team Children, Citizen Service, the Municipality of Silkeborg, Denmark. It demonstrates how these meetings created different organizational process innovations, and how theoretical concepts like DHTM, dissensus organizing and dissensus sensibility were developed from practice." (author's abstract

Beslutningsforløb for store trafikanlæg i Danmark: Eksemplificeret ved den jyske længdebane og en fast Kattegatforbindelse

Sigtet med dette paper er at diskutere beslutningsforløb og planlægningsmetodik for større trafikanlæg. Dette eksemplificeres ved udbygningen af banenettet i Vestdanmark set i sammenhæng med forslaget til en fast forbindelse over Kattegat. Paperet tager udgangspunkt i og belyser følgende to iagttagelser om det transportpolitiske beslutningsforløb for henholdsvis den jyske længdebane1 og en fast Kattegatforbindelse: I 1995-97 gennemførte det på daværende tidspunkt nedsatte ”Baneplanudvalg” en analyse af behovet for modernisering af den jyske længdebane. Resultaterne af analysen blev publiceret i rapporten ”Modernisering af jernbanens hovednet” (Trafikministeriet, april 1997). Denne analyse er ikke blevet videreført eller indarbejdet i senere transportpolitiske analyser og initiativer, hverken i forbindelse med Transportrådets aktiviteter der ophørte i 2001, eller i det omfattende udredningsarbejde der blev gennemført i 2007 af Infrastrukturkommissionen. I efteråret 2008 blev der fremlagt to forskellige konsulentrapporter (”Niras rapporten” og ”Rambøll rapporten”) om en fast Kattegatforbindelse via Samsø. Disse to rapporter ledte frem til meget modstridende konklusioner vedrørende den økonomiske bæredygtighed for dette projekt. Niras rapportens konklusion har dannet grundlag for Regeringens beslutning om ikke at indarbejde Kattegatforbindelsen i sine overvejelser og trafikinvesteringsplan. Derimod har en fast Kattegatforbindelse opbakning fra Region Midtjylland som initierede Rambøll rapporten. Den i forlængelse heraf etablerede Kattegatkomité tog initiativ til en tredje rapport (udført af konsulent- konsortiet Grontmij/Carl Bro og Damwad), som blev præsenteret i oktober 2009. Denne rapport pegede på en række positive dynamiske effekter af at bygge en fast Kattegatforbindelse, og anbefalede at disse effekter bliver taget i regning i en mere omfattende økonomisk vurdering af projektet