Who should do the talking? The proliferation of dialogue as governmental technology

an article by Mads Peter Karlsen (University of Copenhagen) and Kaspar Villadsen (Copenhagen Business School) in Culture and Organization Volume 14 Issue 4 (December 2008)

Abstract
This paper investigates the recent proliferation of appeals to “dialogue” as a solution to problems in a broad spectrum of different organisational settings. Instead of top-down management and expert-driven public services, we are told we need “dialogue-based” management, health treatment, elder care, social counselling, and so forth. Dialogue is often presented as a tool that will reverse the stifling dominance of authoritative expertise and leadership, liberating the energy of employees, clients and patients. However, by viewing the dialogue as a “governmental technology”, the authors emphasise that it is not simply a tool that can be used by some to liberate or govern others, or to dominate nature. A technology is rather a structuring of actions that implies that also “the governors” inevitably exercise power over themselves. The paper demonstrates how dialogue technology re-structures organisational domains of speech and hereby contributes to reconfiguring inter-relations and self-relations within key institutions of modern society.

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