This case study in the professional education of engineers is based on a Talent Programme at Combitech in Sweden, in association with the Royal Institute of Technology. The approach is based on use of the Dialogue Seminar Method.
Managing knowledge involves having the ability to establish intersubjectivity between a group of individuals. This paper describes two case studies where an advanced and highly structured dialogue is used as the key instrument for generating new ideas, and for establishing a common understanding of a new subject. Together with Prof. Bo Göranzon at the Department of Skill and Technology at Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Combitech Systems AB spent four years developing Dialogue Seminar method. After a period of thorough testing at Combitech Systems, the method has been in use at a number of other development organisations. The method is based on a view of knowledge developed by philosophers such as Aristotle, Descartes, Diderot and Wittgenstein, where tacit knowledge-or experience-based knowledge-is central. The purpose of the concept is to give a wider understanding of knowledge, and the basic procedure involves training people to change perspective in order to stimulate new thinking. The three different cases clearly demonstrate that the Dialogue Seminar method can be successful in different situations, for example, gathering experience from a completed project, establishing a common language in a newly formed team or helping to specify a new product.
A project manager with a holistic systems engineering perspective, encounters dilemmas and must make decisions on a daily basis. Traditional skills development programs are not well‐suited for these persons. Based on knowledge theory, a program has been developed that focuses on the practical knowledge that an experienced person has developed. The Dialog Seminar method has been used and tested on a group of project managers. At the final seminar of the program, the group met the well‐known Swedish actor Erland Josephson, and through analogical thinking, the project managers improved their understanding of their own professional roles through comparison with those of the actor and the director. The result is an awareness of the dilemmas, an ability to see them and meet them with improved security, and also insights on how they could improve their project management skills.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.