• Identify and address structural issues in organisational dialogue.
• Describe and develop dialogue capabilities mentioned in the course literature.
• Identify and evaluate methods for community building and management mentioned in the course literature and show ability to apply these to praxis
• Apply models of partnerships to select, optimise and manage partnerships as a growth strategy.
• Demonstrate the above through analysis of the engagement in a project centred on the digital platform YouTube.

Course content and structure

The capacity to understand and work strategically with dialogue is an important skill for managers to possess. Being mindful of the dynamics of dialogues you participate in and/or lead can significantly benefit both your organisation and your personal career.

As a skilled facilitator of dialogue processes, you can better leverage viewpoint diversity in ways which enhance decision making processes, enhance co-creation processes, build strong and supportive communities within and around the organisation, optimise and realise the potential of partnerships, and, in general, identify, develop and capture opportunities for value creation. On the other hand, if you manage dialogue poorly, viewpoint diversity can instead lead to wasting time and other resources on unproductive power struggles which demotivate employees and erode community support for the organisation.

We will particularly focus on applying dialogue theory to building communities and working with strategic partnerships.

Mastering dialogue allows you to work strategically with community building, which is a powerful way of securing coherence internally in the organisation on the one hand and building a supportive ecosystem externally among customers, suppliers, investors and other stakeholders on the other. Both contribute significantly to securing organisational growth and success.

Mastering dialogue also allows you to better select profitable partnerships and optimise and realise the potential of these partnerships. This is important since partnerships are becoming the new best practice among organisations seeking growth in an economic climate characterised by globalisation, increasing consolidation and quickly changing markets. When partnerships fail, it is often due to lack of skilful dialogue between the partners.

The course will have a strong emphasis, not only on developing knowledge about dialogue but also on translating that knowledge into practice. To achieve this goal, the course will include a group project where students will build and grow a YouTube channel. The reason for working with YouTube is first, that YouTube is a communication channel that is increasingly important to businesses, and second, more importantly, that YouTube as a communication channel is inherently dialogue-based – unlike many of the more traditional communication channels used by organisations, which are one-way broadcasting channels. Thus, YouTube offers an ideal vehicle for learning how to translate theories of dialogue into practice and how to use dialogue to build communities and form partnerships supporting growth.

The course is well suited for OIE students and students who do their internship at Copenhagen School of Entrepreneurship (CSE), but all are welcome.

The Studio, the team studio or the new second floor between these two would be the best room for this course. Other rooms will work as well - as long as it is not a lecture hall where students cannot move their chairs. 

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