ABSTRACT
In ancient times, the word dialectic meant simply the art (techne) of speaking (legein) between (dia) people. Managers use dialectic thinking whenever they need a clear, logical, and concise manner of understanding everything from the detailed flow chart of operations to understanding the options for making an informed managerial decision. Learning how to use Dialectic grammatically or rhetorically provides an effective tool for achieving goals. The impoverished travesty of Dialectic slips under the radar in the e-talk age as political dialogue. Grounded as it is in oppositional thinking, the SWOT analysis corresponds fully to dialectikos. SWOT is a powerful managerial tool for making informed decisions, looking for the synthesis that comes from a thesis/antithesis process, breaking pros and cons into constitutive and rearrangeable parts for problem solving. The history of dialectical thinking repeatedly reveals reality forced to conform to rigid models. Determining the principles is a grammatico-dialectical task; applying them is a dialectico-rhetorical project.
