Introduces diversity management as managing the increased diversity of issues that confront humankind in contemporary organizational and societal affairs. Defines triple loop learning as being about the increase in the fullness and deepness of learning about the diversity of issues and dilemmas faced. Presents the contours of diversity management and triple loop learning. Sees the latter as the dénouement of single loop learning and of double loop learning. Provides a “quickmap” of the contours of diversity management and triple loop learning.

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The process of Choice in TSI is reexamined in this paper. Previously, methods 2 have been understood to have a given and immediate purpose and are employed when this is judged to be most suitable in the circumstances. In this paper we suggest that methods can be operated in ways that meet purposes not provided by their founding theoretical underpinnings. We develop this argument by pointing to cases where cybernetic or soft methods are driven by purposes and principles given to emancipatory methodology--in a quest to address more effectively issues of coercion. This may be necessary when explicit and direct employment of emancipatory methodology is not sensitive enough to political dynamics, where certain people may feel overly threatened by its language and consequently feel the need to subvert its use. We develop a defence for this oblique use of cybernetic and soft methods in coercive contexts, and extend the argument to suggest that all methods can be employed in such a way.

What managers do in terms of managing groups of people in the workplace, or interacting with different stakeholder groups, requires similar skills to those of the process facilitator in management consultancy. There are different views of the role of the facilitator in the management literature that have been advanced as ways of aiding group processes. This article offers an account of how the role of facilitators might be extended towards a process of `critical facilitation'. The view that we present is elucidated through our using an exemplar of our application of this approach. This mode of facilitation was used by us as part of a research initiative aimed at exploring standard setting in the National Health Service in a region of the UK. It involved facilitating peer-group and multi-agency workshops involving six cross-organizational groups. By using this exemplar we show how facilitators might intervene in group discussions and become involved in various ways in the challenging of statements made, as part of the process of discourse. Our view of how statements can be scrutinized is based on a pragmatized version of Habermas's concentration on different types of validity claims that may be invoked in speech situations. We suggest that critical facilitation does not consist of assuming an uninvolved (more or less detached) attitude, but rather of developing an orientation of openness to discourse. We rely to some extent on Habermas's view of what discourse might involve, although we do not concur with his requirement that the search for consensus must inform the process.

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