OS in China

[owen]

At 11:18 PM 6/15/99 +0800, you wrote:
>
> I have just gotten into some conversations about the reaction to Chinese
> groups to an Open Space event.  My gut reaction is that it would work after
> the initial shock of the extreeme egalitarianism and opportunity to take
> responsibility for the agenda and content.  However, I do not have any
> empirical data to back this up.
>
> Do any of you have stories about doing programs in a Chinese or Asian
> environment, and what has been the response of the participants?

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Talking about Open Space in an Asian Environment requires some definition --
like What is Asia? If you include India -- the Open Space Experience is
extensive and positive. Indeed one of the first Open Space gatherings for folks
other that the strange crew the assembled for the annual Symposium on
Organization Transformation was done under the sponsorship of the Tata Family
Businesses in Goa. For an account of this you might take a look at the opening
chapter of my book "Expanding Our Now" (Berrett-Koehler/1997) That Open space
was done in 1989, and it has continued in various ways ever since. There have
also been reports of folks using Open Space with non-mainland Chinese groups
(Hong Kong, Singapore etc)  where it seemed to work just fine. I think Brian
Bainbridge (Australia) has done something in the area (maybe Indonesia?) and if
he is listening perhaps he could tell me that I am wrong (or right?). Bottom
line is that I would predict that the Chinese response would be just about the
same as anybody else within the general confines of Homo sapiens.

Harrison
Harrison Owen
7808 River Falls Drive
Potomac, MD 20854   USA
301-469-9269 (phone)
301-983-9314 (fax)
email owen at tmn.com
Website http://www.tmn.com/~owen
Open Space Institute website
http://www.tmn.com/openspace
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