Relationel Praksis

ABSTRACT

TOWARDS MORE AND BETTER WELFARE THROUGH DIALOGIC ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
– GOOD EXPERIENCES FROM A LARGE DEVELOPMENT PROJECT IN BILLUND MUNICIPALITY

We have dedicated this special issue of Relational Practice to share the experiences of a large scale dialogic organizational
development project in Billund Municipality, Denmark. We do so with the intent of offering a description of how such large scale
projects can influence and contribute to the development of our welfare sector through a relational way of working. Further, the
purpose of this description is to inspire new forms of dialogical organizational change and relational management and leadership.

We find that there are not yet many descriptions within the dialogical organization development literature that accounts for
creating and running major change projects. This special issue is an attempt to contribute to such literature, through a unique
insight into what it means to work on a large scale project – to improve our welfare.
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We invite you to take part in the story of the project as it has unfolded. We do not claim to account for all details, but we do
offer stories of the emerging new practices of the participating employees and leaders, and we describe the project and its different
phases as it has been unfolding, from the perspective of the participating consultants. The idea of initiating the project
was a vision of changing the citizen-related work, from providing services to offering a collaborative relationship. Changing the
frontline employees approach would then become a catalyst for cultural and political change, which would spread further up
through the entire organization.

This special issue is structured so that it is based on both real-life stories from the developmental process and theory that
unfolds the movements towards an increasingly relational welfare practice, framing the project in a larger social context. Gervase
Bushe’s research on the supporting conditions for successful dialogic organization development will provide a framework
for presenting the concrete structure and performance of the dialogical development.