Why dialogue is important in business

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Dialogue improves relationships. For example, Yankelovich wrote of how dialogue builds trust so that it becomes "natural to cooperate with one another and know how to create the common ground on which successful cooperation depends.

We reach out to one another. We try to connect with one another. The frustration of modern life is that there are these obstacles. Life is full of impersonal transactions.

But we're hungry for relationships. When people connect that way, they feel very good about each other. It's a need that's fundamental. You need to have that closeness. It is being related by what I have come to think of as 'relational leadership,' where the defining task of leaders is developing webs of relationships with others. There's a growing trend to form strategic alliances with organizations that bring "different corporate cultures, traditions, structures, and even languages to the new partnerships.

Without dialogue, misunderstandings arise almost immediately. The new HR manager broke the moral and ethical commitment included in the agreement by failing to respect the undertaking Habermas He revoked the mutual commitment and the bases for dialogue Gusdorf Respect for one another seemed important in order to progress together.

This is an example of self-organized persons who managed to build a community of persons. When the HR manager left 1.

He was hoping to divide any potential opposition. They were anxious to maintain a dialogue and the balance that previously existed. Employees decided to organize themselves informally to maintain their unity.

They organized some informal discussions to regulate their group. Employees confronted the attempt to divide them as a group. They tried to obtain together some answers to the sales rumour. In , the business buyout was announced. Operators were looking for information about the future of their employment. Without answers, operators and employees started a day strike that paralyzed almost all of the island economy.

For the record, the agreement documents were burnt on the front steps of the building, near the new director. The new HR manager broke with the culture established by his predecessor. Formerly, the HR manager would advocate trust and dialogue in order to maintain good, lasting relationships.

These relationships were necessary to keep the social dialogue open and develop conditions for an optimal and humanly responsible production. Even if it was difficult, we found a long-term management strategy that proved to be efficient economically return of quality production , socially no conflicts for 1.

And yet, the new HR manager reoriented his strategy toward short-term strategies, by seizing control of the dialogue, spaces, and authority to act. He cut off his employees when they tried to express themselves concerning the sale of the company. According to Ostrom , , one of the principles of implementing commons governance concerns monitoring and graduated sanctions if someone violates rules. However, when the person who represents an important appropriator decides to stop self-organization, he or she is throwing away any previous gains.

This destroys the community of persons, reigniting previous conflicts. Even if market-based, this governing of commons seems to be counterproductive, the apparent loss of time actually making the organization more efficient. An imposition of the hierarchy breaks the trust Ostrom that was previously established. While it is hard to build trust, it is easy to disrupt it. This appears obvious, but it is often forgotten in practice.

This new manager thought that a Leviathan could govern the common-pool resource and so he disrupted the agreement. However, in this case, it seems that the organization had nothing to share, there were no commons. Of course, persons should share resources and at least a few goals, but in a symbolic way they remain individuals standing next to one another.

The head of the company forgot that an increased centralization generates, in the long run, some adverse effects Ostrom At its extreme, it is a predatory behaviour often founded on individualistic premises. This new HR manager referred to the economic rationality as the supreme norm of the organization Chanlat Communication is the primary activity of a manager, especially for a Human Resources manager.

As Chanlat highlights, failure in communication is painful for those concerned and costly for the company as a whole. The decision to overlook the agreement made the employees think that the executive management would not trust them.

However, trust is essential in cooperation; trust in others and believing that reciprocity is present Gambetta Social dialogue is fragile; it rests on communication and moral behaviours Perroux By putting a stop to dialogue, this new HR manager stopped seeing the organization as a community. Even if he tried to divide this community, he just managed to develop a community of employees, who had come to learn that dialogue was important for continuity Banathy and Jenlink The dialogue implemented during our action research showed employees the advantages of this kind of management.

Employees were therefore motivated to maintain a community between them since they judged the situation to be unfair. Under these circumstances, employees could not feel included in an authentic community with persons representing the employer Perroux While wanting to divide the existing community, the HR manager actually reinforced the community of employees. Because he was not part of it, he could not give meaning to the community Habermas By so doing, he expanded the idea of responsibility among the employees.

Several theories link freedom to responsibility and obligation, and underestimating the part of the other. This way of thinking can generate a form of ethical promotheism that may create heroes, but would not offer room for reciprocity in relationships Danese and Di Nicola A previous and always new enemy of ethical personalism is the utilitarian economism that promotes the calculation of advantages and disadvantages i.

Reference to the notion of person does not lead to denying the value of economic rationality; it is more for integrating several rationalities than for referring to the integrality of the person Danese and Di Nicola Mounier explains that taking away what is human in work can lead proletarians to rebel e. Back to our case, the community of employees was disappointed and disillusioned. Mounier proposes to reconstitute natural communities with persons and develop organizations as communities of persons.

So, even if the manager seemed to be rational and productive, in reality, his decision was counterproductive for the organization. Time required to have a dialogue is neither wasted nor is it unproductive, it could make it possible to develop the sense of belonging to a community of persons.

This paper explored the concept of community of persons as proposed by Naughton by using a case study. The in-depth analysis of this case highlights the importance of dialogue. The case presented above continues and goes beyond this idea. The concept of dialogue develops the idea of an appropriate communication. In short, this case underlined dialogue, collaborative action and community conflict resolution to create commons.

In relation to the first and the third parts of the case, there was no dialogue between managers and employees. There was only top to bottom information. This absence of dialogue sparked dissension and division between actors in the organization. In the second part, actors became persons with relationships and commons. Organizations consist of persons who collaborate in a community. So a community does not create commons without dialogue and personal engagement.

Persons may work in the same organization, but without the presence of dialogue or without being part of the community, it is impossible to build commons. This process of building commons includes the possibility of conflicts arising. In our case, persons improved their inner knowing and mutual trust with collective intelligence, respect of persons and values, dialogue throughout the learning process, and collaborative actions. Dialogue has two forces: centrifugal and centripetal Bakhtin Dialogue could generate consensus and conflicts were not experienced as a trial of strength; conflicts became opportunities to build common solutions.

Finally, authentic human relations Tablan foster dialogue. The establishment of dialogue fosters the sense of community and vice versa in a recursive way Morin Indeed, to develop dialogue, we need to be open to others toward who this openness is directed. When persons have the feeling of not being listened to, this is not consistent with viewing the organization as a community of persons; and, in our case, the organization reverted to an association of individuals.

This is typical of what happens in many organizations. Managers want their employees to be committed, to build a team, but in reality these persons do not want to share with other employees. How can commons be managed if persons have nothing in common? Without this, organizations could seem rational and efficient while generating a lot of hidden costs and becoming less efficient.

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