Experiences of Opening Up Communicative Spaces for Large-Scope Issues

Tuula Heiskanen,Satu Kalliola

doi:10.3390/challe12020025

Abstract

The continuously changing world creates new challenges, large-scope issues, both at the community and the organizational level. Currently, sustainable development is among the key issues demanding organizational learning and new ways of operation. The paper looks for the potential of Scandinavian communicative-oriented action research (AR), applied in dialogue forums, to enhance learning and planning of integrative solutions to meet the needs of various actor groups. The paper links two intertwined AR lines of a Finnish work research institute to the contexts of classic and current AR discussion and their original social conditions in the early 1990s, when they were challenged by a severe recession. The characteristics of communicative spaces applied in the two cases are analysed qualitatively. The data, consisting of case reports, are reread and interpreted in a framework that concretizes Habermasian ideals of free communication. The elements of organisational learning and power embedded in the organisational positions of the participants dealing with large-scope societal issues are made explicit. Free communication and joint agreements of concrete plans require active agency that can be learned in a psychologically and socially safe communicative space where Habermasian lifeworld and system interact. The research shows the malleability of dialogue-based communicative spaces that can be applied in versatile social and organizational conditions. A future option would be a continuous dialogue applied in permanent dialogue structures.

Highlights

All societies face enormous challenges and need new ways to use all available resources—economic, material, and human —to meet them
The descriptive analysis of the two action research (AR) lines adopted in the cases shows the versatile applicability of dialogue-based communicative spaces in dealing with large-scope issues in their societal contexts
We see that, Case 1 was conducted during the ‘moments’ of AR [4] and that Case 2 relied more on the traditional idea of the evaluation of action taken after dialogues as a means of learning and making new action plans [47], the end result is the same: the participants learn when they reflect together on the initial opportunities to take new action and the outcome of the action taken

Summary

Introduction

All societies face enormous challenges and need new ways to use all available resources—economic, material, and human —to meet them. These societal challenges, which are fundamentally large-scope issues, lead to constant changes at the community and organizational levels. Kasvio (2014) [1] continues that sustainable working life is one of the core factors of sustainability This view calls for the definition of organizational sustainability used, for example, by de Waal, Weaver, Day and Heijden (2019) [2]: organizational sustainability results from activities that demonstrate the ability of the organization to maintain its business operations viably whilst not negatively impacting any social and ecological systems

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Results

Conclusion