Diagnostic and Dialogic OD Approaches in a Collaborative Inquiry for Change: How and Why are They Successfully Coapplied?

Change leaders who want to invite members’ spirit of inquiry face a challenge; the conditions under which change practitioners successfully blend the strengths of diagnostic and dialogic approaches are not explicitly incorporated within the established theories. This article aims to describe how changing meaning-making systems (in other words, changing mindsets) can be crucial in facilitating successful coapplication of diagnostic and dialogic approaches. A new conditional combination (shared focus on realizing desired performance and change agents’ dialogic anchoring) for the emergence of the practitioners’ integrative mindset is examined, and its implications for research in blending diagnostic and dialogic OD approaches and related fields are discussed.