CHAPTER FORTY
Dialogic OD
Turning Away from Diagnosis
The central point of this chapter is that some OD practices have moved away from the “scientism” or “modernist” mindset of the founders of the field and are taking us in new directions. Practitioners of these new forms don’t do much in the way of “objective” data collection and diagnosis. What is emerging is more in line with interpretive, social constructionist, and other post-modern philosophies. However, much of this shift in practice is not being written about, and when it is, there isn’t much awareness or discussion of how fundamentally different some of the assumptions behind what Bob Marshak and I have labeled “Dialogic OD” are from conventional, “Diagnostic ...