Ethics of Dialogue

[Page 1255]The ethics of dialogue has drawn increasing attention from scholars in the humanities and social sciences, as well as from policy makers and problem solvers in the realms of business, government, and civil society. An ethics of dialogue can provide rules of engagement for exploring enhanced learning and relationship building potentials by multiple stakeholders struggling to make sense of complex, messy problems that are characterized by value or interest conflicts and contested knowledge claims. Growing interest in developing this capability for collective sense making via dialogic exploration of shared problem domains is associated with a gradual (and often reluctant) recognition that more “objective” or “scientific” modes of inquiry may not be well suited to addressing shared, complex, interdependent “wicked” problems that may threaten the ...