Management - What We Do For Companies and Organisations

 

Industry leaders of the future will be those who have developed critical thinkers at all levels of their organisations.

DialogueWorks' training programmes for organisations stimulate critical and creative thinking to produce innovative and inspired ways of approaching issues and problems.

 

Dilemma Training - at the client's premises or open enrolment courses - helps members of organisations to address ethical choices effectively, to discuss them efficiently and to find and agree methods of integrating them within the organisation's mainstream objectives.
Dilemma Training strengthens individuals’ ethical decision-making and enables each participant to recognise what the right action is in their own everyday lives. Participants are introduced to a six-step thinking tool that they can use themselves in their personal and professional lives. At the same time, the course enables participants to use this inclusive method as an effective intervention to tackle issues central to the running of a good organisation.

Good decision-making is central to (corporate) citizenship and personal, social and corporate responsibility. By listening to people’s own dilemmas an insight is gained into an organisation’s core-dilemmas. Therefore the method can also be used as the first step to develop the rules and the ethical code of an organisation. This programme is an innovative first step to shaping a more ethical organisation. The method, used successfully in education, business and the public sector, was developed by the European Institute for Business Ethics at the University of Nyenrode (NL) and adapted by DialogueWorks.

This approach is relevant at all levels of operation, from the strategic to the logistic, and in a wide variety of settings, e.g.

• Senior management meetings
• Committee meetings
• Staff or team meetings

Our training develops:

• dialogical virtues both within meetings and outside
• company ethos/shared values and how these can be translated into practice
• critical and creative thinking within teams or the organisation as a whole
• a more reflective and resolute workforce

Our clients include Amsterdam City Council, South Wales police force, Barclays Bank and a major English local authority. Our work has been featured in various media including Financial Times and The Guardian and British and Belgian TV.

For more in-depth information about Dilemma Training in government, education and business, together with a social and historical perspective, click here for a PDF file or get in touch with us.

 

Dialogue Underpins Corporate Citizenship

The challenge is to create the conditions where social and environmental benefits go hand in hand with competitive advantage. A new vision for business is needed."
The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) London.
Businesses and institutions face unprecedented social pressures to demonstrate good corporate citizenship.

Consumer power is increasingly dictating business behaviour. Consumer pressure groups demand more ethical corporate management and improved environmental performance, as well as accountability to stakeholder groups other than just the shareholders. Interest in Business Ethics over the last few years has been triggered by increased public outrage and sometimes incredulity, about dramatic increases in the incidents of business crime, corruption and irresponsibility, and environmental degradation.

Meanwhile, the progress of European integration, with its increasingly stringent sets of standards, means that business is under increasing pressure to meet the ideals of an international culture. Proving that ethics can live with the brutal realities of capitalism is the major challenge facing the business world in the new millennium. Corporate citizenship is here today - and here to stay.

THE PROBLEM
Most industries accept the need to act like a good corporate citizen - a responsible member of society. Yet which members of the organisation or society should a company be most responsible to - shareholders, employees, the environment, consumers? Trying to look after the interests of all of them inevitably leads to moral dilemmas, where choices have to be made between courses of action which are all 'the right thing to do', but where leaving out any of them would be 'wrong'.
What does it mean for an organisation to act ethically? How can executives improve the ethical quality of their decisions? How can they ensure that their decisions will not backfire? They work in a moral mine field. At any moment, a seemingly innocuous decision can explode in their faces.
And how can companies prove they really are ethical? Bland mission statements no longer cut any ice.

WHY BOTHER?
Aside from any public image considerations, a good business ethics policy is the first line of defence against unethical or illegal activities. Reasons why companies should build high ethical standards include building a good reputation, which will bring more business in the future; preventing fraud; and motivating employees, who tend to be more productive when they can trust the ethical and moral standards of their employer.
It is an established fact that market leaders hold on to their position by anticipating, market, social and especially legislative changes - 'staying ahead of the game'. Those companies that act proactively on an ethics policy, should gain immensely in terms that positively impact the bottom line.

 

Ethical Decision-making in Higher Education

What is the right thing to do here is a question that all of us with a leadership role in Education have worried about at some time. The practical training offers advice, and a model for taking ethically informed decisions that everyone can use in their workplace. It enables educators to identify and solve moral dilemmas and to create spaces within their institution to discuss moral issues, including the organisational structures that can cause dilemmas. The six-step approach can be used with literature, newspaper articles, thought experiments, and carefully selected ‘real life’ dilemmas. When using real dilemmas, educators also gain valuable insights into the ‘core dilemmas’ of their institution. They can therefore use the Dilemma Training method as a first step to developing an insightful code of ethics within their workplace. DT is an innovative first step to shaping a more ethical university.

Aims of the training:

• Provide workshop sessions on practical ways to make better moral decisions
• Consider the changes in the moral climate and the core values that underpin those changes
• Create awareness of the moral dimension of decisions and the connected challenges and responsibilities of leadership roles in professional settings
• Gain a better understanding of what is involved in shaping an ethical institution

Intended Learning Outcomes:
By the end of the training participants should be able to:

• identify differences between a moral dilemma and other kind of decisions
• understand the structure of a reasoned judgment when deciding what a morally right decision is
• apply a six-step thinking tool to a case-study that could easily relate to their own professional context

If you want us to keep you informed about our work, please subscribe to DW News, which will keep you up to date about our work and developments in thinking skills and dilemma training.
For a recent article about Dilemma Training by undergraduate students, click here