Workplace conversations

Workplace conversations

David Jones discusses whether we could envision a new framework for understanding the constitutive character of our enterprise conversations as enactments of the images of a speaking God.

Abstract

Framing and revitalising the workplace as an equivalently legitimate forum for the evangelistic presence of a believer is a way of addressing the Sunday/Monday divide. But when our conceptions of our place in the world are already weak even in our faith communities, achieving equivalence in the workplace lacks vigour.  For there to be real progress, we need to provide Christian leaders in every enterprise – work and faith – with an epistemology to inform their endeavours, not just ethically filter them.

We need to find a way of being Christian that is not “adjectival”, but ontological in every walk of life. We need to find a way to escape the functional dualisms that trap us when we try to name what is “Christian” about what we do when the context is not a faith community. We need to find a way of understanding outcome focused work as an expression of our being in Christ from first principles, not as an addendum.

The Requisite Conversations framework provides a way of understanding the constitutive character of our enterprise conversations as enactments of the images of a speaking God. It provides a new scaffolding for the complex adaptive system of conversations used in contexts where humans coordinate toward a purpose. It enables a new calibre of enterprise collaboration in an era where effective knowledge work and relational interactions are at a premium.

Biography

David Jones was involved in pioneering 3rd & 4th order design methods in Australian businesses and public services entities from 1991. He was responsible for People and Knowledge in the design firm 2nd Road and continues as a coach and consultant in design as a social technology. David has lectured in strategy as design (M. Proj. Man. UTS) and on creativity, entrepreneurship and organisational communications (B Bus. and M.Lead. Alphacrucis). David has a B.Sc. Hons (I) in microbiology, an M.A. (apologetics), Th.M (hermeneutics), and is enrolled in a PhD (business and linguistics) at Alphacrucis College.

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