ABSTRACT
This chapter ifeatures a review of the literature and key concepts of rhizomatous dialogue. It focuses on organizational engagement. The chapter describes how groupthink and other variables affect decision-making in ways that exclude more than include. It also focuses on using a dialogical engagement-oriented communication approach in organizations to build stronger networks and encourage inclusion over exclusion. The concept of rhizomatous dialogue is integral to authors' argument about inclusion and exclusion. The rise of engagement as a subject of interest to communication scholars in the latter part of the 20th century coincided with a shift away from conceptualizing communication as information transmission and a move toward more collaborative, deliberative, democratic, and participatory communication processes concerned about community agency as well as organizational effectiveness. A rhizomatous dialogic engagement approach to inclusion stands in stark opposition to the photo-op tokenism that has become the “diversity” norm in some organizations.
