Open Strategy-Making at the Wikimedia Foundation: A Dialogic Perspective

Abstract

Dialogue is essential to open strategy processes, yet these processes have not been researched from a dialogic perspective. We therefore ask the question: What is the role of dialogue in open strategy processes? Our study of the development of Wikimedia’s 5-year strategy plan through an open strategy process reveals the endemic nature of tensions occasioned by the intersection of dialogue as an emergent, nonhierarchical practice, and strategy, as a practice that requires direction, focus, and alignment. Furthermore, our study suggests that context matters to both dialogic and open strategy processes and challenges universalist features of dialogue. Specifically, dialogic organization development and large group interventions perspectives can offer useful lenses to incorporate contextual features. Finally, our implications for practice suggest that particular organizing principles of open strategy processes can foster a healthy dialogic process in terms of enabling ongoing, diverse, and substantive interactions and inputs by stakeholders.