ABSTRACT

Network organizations are at the centre of attention for two reasons. First, due to the need to increase their flexibility, companies have to concentrate on their core competencies and cooperate with other companies in many fields. Second, the need for an increase in scales leads to mergers with companies in the same competence domain. Both factors induce the need for intensive cooperation across organizational, spatial and political borders. Without the political element, communication seems to be a more or less neutral and technical activity that can be evaluated in terms of validity, reliability, and efficiency. Dialogue as a specific form of communication is often distinguished from 'monologue'. In making this distinction, it is tempting to characterize monologue as 'one-way' communication and dialogue as 'two-way'. However, that can be confusing because a monologue can be two-way too, and still differ from a dialogue.