Negotiating shared meanings of the management process: A discourse in two voices

Abstract

Some of the difficulties involved in the development of Western perspectives on the market economy in the Eastern European post-command economies are examined by means of a dialogue between two selves engaged in the development of a shared understanding of three types of processes that, it is asserted, have characteristics in common. The processes are (a) those in which managers engage as they enact the role of leader; (b) those in which teachers engage when they seek to create a “community of enquiry in the classroom” (Novak, 1990); and (c) those in which organizational development consultants engage when they seek to catalyze organizational change. The dangers of slot-rattling as a strategy for understanding people operating in a culture different from one's own are exemplified, and the need for sociality as a tactic in the cultural change endeavor is asserted.