ENCOURAGING COMMUNITY DIALOG: APPROACH, PROMISE, AND TENSIONS
There has been growing interest in recent years in what might be termed “community dialogs,” or techniques for engaging broad-based discussions of issues within particular communities. The purpose of this article is to survey and assess this movement based on prior research. We first contrast traditional citizen involvement in public planning as a method of pursing community dialogs with the newer, collaborative public decision making approaches. The article then examines the benefits of community dialogs and the tensions which arise from their pursuit. We conclude by offering an assessment of how we might think about these techniques in the future.
This study investigated the relationship between poor performance and subsequent organizational action using longitudinal data on 87 hospitals. It tested predictions derived from two competing perspectives, prospect theory and the threat-rigidity perspective. Results provide partial support for the expectation of prospect theory that poorly performing hospitals implement riskier actions.