The purpose of this article is to analyse the strategy of managerial professionalization through educational reform as it has been attempted in Britain during the course of the 1980s. This strategy -whatever its internal contradictions and inherent weaknesses -is located within the longer-term historical context in which British management has developed. In turn, this brief historical analysis is complemented by an assessment of the feasibility of the strategy of professionalization in relation to some of the most recent work carried out on the sociology of the professions/expert knowledge. Finally, we discuss the broader implications of this analysis for current debates concerning the reality of managerial work and management culture, as well as the pedagogical principles and practices thought most appropriate to the latterthat is, how managers ought to be educated and developed.

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 (

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. The Development of the Management of CultureThere is a long tradition of concern for the condition of the subordinate upon whom organisational control is imposed. It may take the form of anticipating the end of capitalist exploitation (in Marxism): the more vigorous version is that damage must be limited by a sympathetic concern for the human requirements of the worker (from Ruskin, Morris and E.F. Schumacher) or by a more intelligent self-interest in his management which produces higher productivity through the appearance of more benevolent organisation. Organisational theory and management consultancy, disappointed with the results of Taylorite production planning and rational disposition of the administrative process, looks for other ways of "releasing" the human energy and capacity for cooperation of the subordinate, preferably by a concern for improving his human condition.

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