Community engagement in the public sphere: A comparison of 'participatory communication' and 'listening' models as methods for evaluating symmetrical communication between organisations and their stakeholders

This article reports on Stage 1 of a study investigating the listening competency of two organisations during consultation with their respective stakeholders. Stage 1 is a pilot study comprising the first two cases of a larger empirical study exploring stakeholder perceptions of competent organisational listening competency. (Burnside-Lawry, 2007). The pilot study introduces data analysis through two different prisms to evaluate the extent of competent organisational listening that occurred during two organisation-stakeholder consultations; the framework of listening expectations and perceptions and the norms of communicative action, as measured by criteria derived from the participatory communication model (Jacobson, 2007). Preliminary results suggest unifying listening competency attributes with participatory communication criteria could provide organisations with a deeper understanding of how competent listening practices are achieved, or conversely, not achieved, during consultations between organisations and their stakeholders.