Dialogue is often seen as the process through which the gap between individual and organizational learning is bridged. Here we demonstrate how the enactment of a discursive epistemology -a process which involves the social construction of a dramatized narrative -can be used to generate insights into organizational learning. Using extracts taken from the transcripts of 90 hours of tape-recorded dialogue, we illustrate how a small group of organizational stakeholders construct, deconstruct and re-construct meaning in relation to a critical organizational event (i.e. a learning opportunity) through a generative dialogical process. As a result of this analysis the dominant conceptualization of the role of dialogue in organizational learning -exemplified in Peter Senge's work -is challenged. Here Senge's output-driven, univocal account is rejected in favour of a polyphonic perspective which enables a deeper, richer and less constrained understanding of organizational learning to be developed. The starting point for many writers on 'organizational learning' and the 'learning organization' is individual learning (

 This article examines a piece of corporate theatre. Although theatre has entered organization studies through the dramatistic writing of Kenneth Burke and the dramaturgical writings of Erving Goffman, this article is concerned with an approach variously described as organizational, radical, situation or corporate theatre that treats theatre not primarily as a resource, an ontology or a metaphor but as a technology. This approach involves the deployment by an organization of dramatists, actors, directors, set designers, lighting specialists, and musicians to put on performances in front of audiences. Using frameworks derived from studies of theatre a particular piece of corporate theatre is described and analysed. It is argued that this form of theatre appears to be used to contain reflection and to promote the views of a particular group within an organization. It does not confront an audience but subtly suggests alternative ways of evaluating, construing and understanding issues. This may be achieved by anaesthetizing audience reaction by encouraging imaginative participation in the performance so that cherished beliefs and values do not appear to be directly challenged.

In this article, we review one 'tailor-made play', one piece of organization theatre called Varnishing the Truth. We then reflect on the questions we asked of ourselves while watching this performance and reviewing the video of it: how does this activity relate to its claimed theoretical foundations (Boal's forum theatre)? Is forum theatre an appropriate model for organization theatre? Can 'things be made to move' by an activity such as the one to which we were an audience? In the process of answering these questions, we emphasize the reductive adoption of radical techniques (that is, Boal's forum theatre); the depoliticization of corporate theatre; and, the limitations of the theory of negotiated order as a model for learning, given the discursive construction of organizational roles.