The Quality Café: developing the World Café method for organisational learning by including quality management tools

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the possibility of integrating the World Café method with the affinity diagram tool from quality management. The proposed combination is called the Quality Café. Quality Cafés were carried out at seven spa hotels, one municipality and two student organisations. The cafés were assessed with feedback seminars and questionnaires. The findings show that the method was appreciated by the participants. It contributed to profound dialogues with deepening insights, which stimulated creativity, increased understanding for quality issues and allowed a more holistic view. In addition, the method was experienced as enjoyable and in itself creating coherence. The findings were related to organisational learning theory and several connections were found. The Quality Café should be a useful method for researchers in social science as well as for practitioners. A limitation is that determining the specific effects of the Quality Café method compared to the original World Café is difficult.

Keywords:

• World Café
• Quality Café
• organisational learning
• quality management
• qualitative methodology

ORCID

Yvonne Lagrosen http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5545-5457

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish Knowledge Foundation/Stiftelsen för Kunskaps- och Kompetensutveckling.