Gustavsen, Björn: Democratic Dialogue and Development

Richard Ennals ()
Additional contact information
Richard Ennals: University of Agder

Chapter 41 in The Palgrave Handbook of Organizational Change Thinkers, 2021, pp 681-698 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Björn Gustavsen, with an original professional background as a lawyer and judge in his native Norway, has had a formative role in organizational development processes in Norway, Sweden, Scandinavia, and the European Union over four decades. Following in the tradition of Norwegian working life research by Trist and Thorsrud, he has provided the conceptual framework and practical case studies which have driven major national and international programs. He has learned from different experiences of organizational change in, for example, the USA and Japan, but he has identified a distinctive way forward for the European Union, where he has acted as a senior adviser. In contrast to conventional Taylorist top-down management and reliance on expert consultants, his approach has been bottom-up and concept-driven, with a focus on empowering workers. With a commitment to long-term sustainable processes, he has emphasized the importance of capacity building and succession planning, highlighting development organizations. His approach to partnership and coalition building has enabled collaboration across sectors, in the cause of creating collaborative advantage. He has a distinctive fluent academic writing style but spends most of his time engaged in the design and practice of development, and editing the work of younger colleagues. He has seen the role of academic journals and edited books in the development process, so he has encouraged new publications, but without seeking to dominate. He took ideas of action research and case studies and applied them to national enterprise development programs, working with the labor market parties. This has resulted in a distinctive research and development culture.

Keywords: Action research; Democratic dialogue; Development coalition; Development organization; Labor market parties (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-030-38324-4_42

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783030383244

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-38324-4_42

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().