How clients and consultants use dialogic practices in knowledge creation

Abstract

As part of our research on how knowledge is created in client-consultant interaction, we studied how dialogic practices had been used in knowledge-creation projects in different organisations in The Netherlands. Qualitative research was done in which 6 cases, of which 5 positive and 1 negative were studied. Semi-structured interviews with clients, consultants and project participants as well as document analysis and an expert group workshop were used. In addition, Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) was used, although this was used mainly to help focus on relevant outcomes, as the small amount of cases meant QCA could only be used to a limited extent. Our findings suggest that dialogic practices identified by Majchrzak, More, & Faraj (2012) have been used in all cases studied. These practices are voicing fragments, co-creating a scaffold, dialoguing around the scaffold, putting the scaffold aside and sustaining engagement. This indicates that Majchrzak et al's (2012) findings do not only apply to the intra-organisational settings that they studied, but also to the inter-organisational settings that we studied. Moreover, our findings suggest some additions to Majchrzak et al (2012). First, the final practice that they had identified, sustaining engagement, seemed to have been used without consultant participation, if it had been used at all. Second, in larger organisations with multiple stakeholders, we found iterative use of dialogic practices. Findings suggest that the purpose of this iteration had been among others to increase chances of pre-emptive acceptance of the outcomes from the client-consultant knowledge creation project. By including larger amounts of stakeholders, these stakeholders become knowledge insiders (Ashforth & Mael, 1989; Gergen, 2011). This could enhance chances of them identifying themselves with the project team's members and results and at the same time of refraining from using reward or coercive power resources (Heizmann & Olsson, 2015). These findings relate to identity and power rather than dialogic practices themselves, hence these are not addressed in detail in this paper.