Dialogue on dialogues

The article elaborates on a theoretical understanding of dialogue as a means for the co-production of knowledge in and on leadership communicative practices through ongoing research collaboration that involves leaders, researchers and master students at Aalborg University. Dialogue is viewed from a dissensus perspective, which draws on Bakhtin’s dynamic thoughts on the heteroglossic nature of interaction and on multi-voiced dialogues as battles between centrifugal and centripetal forces. The concept multi-voiced dialogues is posited as a means for opening up dialogical moments of change in order to cultivate the creative and transformational powers of dialogues in which new meanings, voices and forms of knowledge emerge. I discuss how this way of framing the dialogical co-production of knowledge challenges the mainstream understanding of dialogical practices by embracing relational, conflictual and contradictory aspects of meaning-making processes. The concept of multi-voiced dialogues aims to challenge authoritative discourses that advocate monologism, unity and consensus.