Examining Developmental Dialogue: the Emergence of Transformative Agency

Abstract

The intervention method of Developmental Dialogue, originally developed by Laura Mott (1992),has been further elaborated to promote employees’ professional development and well-being. Theaim of formative interventions is to enhance the agency of participants. There is particular interestin transformative agency, which is defined as participants’ capacity to take purposeful actions tochange their work activity. By applying six types of agency expressions, this paper examines howtransformative agency emerges in an interaction between a DD participant and the interventionist.The agency expressions are analysed in the context of explicit and implicit intervention tools andobjects of talk. The analysis yields a new category called reframing agency which is of interestparticularly from a work-related well-being perspective. We interpret the findings with the notionof a contradictory object within the cycle model of professional development. The case suggeststhat changes in work, as interpreted by the researchers do not always fully grasp the participant’ssense of collective work. Finally, at the end of the paper we propose ideas for further research.