Multi-Stakeholder Dialogues as Instrument for Design and Qualitative Research in Educational Organisations

The article focuses on the value of group discussions both as a method of organisational development and as a method of empirical social research. These two perspectives are discussed as a “double meaning”, which often occurs simultaneously in different forms. The concept of “multi-stakeholder dialogues” takes up this challenge. Following on from this, dimensions of the design and research of group discussions will be discussed. The contribution relates to the subproject “Multi-stakeholder Dialogues and Qualitative Evaluation” of the joint project “#ko.vernetzt”. The subproject had the task of accompanying, structuring and researching organisational development in a networked educational institution with dialogue formats. A total of nine dialogues were conducted with different groups of participants, six of which were analysed using qualitative methods. The research perspective is based on a concept of organisations from a praxeological perspective and an understanding of organisational culture as collective conjunctive experience. Thus, the object of qualitative research is the reconstruction of typical modus operandi of the processing of requirements. The results show that structural deficits in educational organisations are reproduced and reinforced by digitisation.