Corporate dialogue constitutes an important pillar in the socio-economic development of countries across the world. Reflecting country specificities, there is no universally agreed model of corporate dialogue. Instead, the specific mechanisms of corporate dialogue that are used (consultation, information exchange, bargaining and negotiation) and the role they play very much depends on the particular national labor relations context.
Corporate dialogue refers to a collective rather than an individual process. Three main mechanisms are relevant: information exchange, consultation, negotiation and dispute resolution. Exchange of information is the most basic process of corporate dialogue and is an important condition for more substantive corporate dialogue. Consultation is a means by which corporate partners not only share information, but also engage in dialogue about issues raised, decision-making remains the prerogative of those that initiated the consultation process.
Corporate dialogue promotes collective learning which can help address and resolve collective action problems. This may be, for instance, through sharing of information that addresses issues of information asymmetry that may exist at organizational level. Corporate dialogue is a governance mechanism with three features, namely relational (the open-ended nature of the corporate dialogue), experimental (through the role of benchmarking and audit) and pragmatist (where actors engage in ‘double-loop’ learning in which they question what has been learned and then improve the learning process). Corporate dialogue can also promote collective learning across systems (e.g. corporate governance or inter-firm contracting), thereby helping to diffuse best practice production techniques for example and storing knowledge and expertise about effective responses to external shocks