Research / Evaluation Papers

To be honest, there hasn't been much research directly related with Art of Hosting, but it is getting better! For some time the best was the work done by the Australian Success Works, which looks at outcomes from at least three Art of Hosting trainings and builds in part on what was done previously in Columbus. In the meantime more reports are coming in...

There is also a group of professors, PhD students and practitioners that are eager to share and learn together...

Here you find some research papers that we know of, in no particular order:

• Building Deliberative Capacity to Create Public Value. The practices and Artifacts of Art of Hosting - building on real academic research, one chapter in edited book, on the effectiveness of the Art of Hosting trainings. By Jodi Sandfort and Kathryn Quick; 2015.

• The critical role of social capital in strategic sustainable development: A study of Art of Hosting and Harvesting Conversations that Matter in Columbus, OH and the European Commission.  The paper includes some useful tools to survey for social capital in organizations and other larger social systems along with recommendations for increasing it. While the recommendations are targeted towards sustainable development professionals, the authors believe that they are relevant addressing any complex social challenge. Written by three students from the Masters in Strategic Leadership Towards Sustainability program. (June 2013)
  The critical role of social capital in strategic sustainable development

• EVALUATION OF ART OF HOSTING TRAININGS; August 2008. Report prepared for the Columbus Medical Association Foundation. Prepared by: Darryl Lang, Ph.D. and Deborah A. Crawford
  080800 Art_of_Hosting_Evaluation_Report_2008_FINAL.doc
• Not a research paper, but a document that might be useful if you think of collecting data around the impact and satisfaction about an Art of Hosting training: A QUESTIONNAIRE. Developed by Stephen Duns and his friends in Australia, 2010
  101009 Post Training Questionnaire AoH.docx
• The full document on the conducted RESEARCH in Australia (125p) with lots of good recommendations for future trainings.
  AoH Success Works Evaluation Report 2011.pdf
• And here the executive summary of this full research.
  Exec Summary of AoH SW Eval Report 2011.pdf
• REPORT University of Minnesota: Practicing the Art of Hosting: Exploring what Art of Hosting and Harvesting workshop participants understand and do. - July 2012.
  • A core component of the Art of Hosting is the focus on practice, in particular combing the frameworks, theories, and techniques to practice the practice and engage in hosting at a deeper level.  Our research explores the way in which people trained in the Art of Hosting practice and make sense of the hosting approach.  We generated our analysis from interviews with 64 people who were trained in the Art of Hosting in the U.S. state of Minnesota in 2011.  Additional interview data was gathered from five community stewards who were part of the trainings.  The report includes accounts and analysis of participants' barriers and learnings from the training workshops, examples of people applying the Art of Hosting practice, and expanding the practice through the community of practice. The report concludes with a harvest from the research in which we identify some areas that could be strengthened for the benefit of the community and practice.
  • 120700 Practicing AoH Report Uni Minnesota.pdf
  • We invite you to share your thoughts and responses with the community, sparking conversation and idea generation about learning and practicing the Art of Hosting.  We are grateful to all who participated in the research and assisted in assembling the report.  The report can be directly accessed at http://www.leadership.umn.edu/education/documents/PractingtheArtofHostingReport.pdf.  For questions on this report, please e-mail cil@umn.edu and include "Art of Hosting Report" in the subject line.  To view information on the Art of Hosting at the University of Minnesota please visit the Center for Integrative Leadership at http://www.leadership.umn.edu/education/leadership_forum.html.
• A masterthesis from Master’s in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability, at the Blekinge Institute of Technology, Karlskrona, Sweden, made by Dana Pearlman, Christopher Baan and Phil Long, combining elements of Art of Hosting, Theory U with sustainable development. Here is their announcement:
  • The Lotus - A Practice Guide for Authentic Leadership in Strategic Sustainable Development - presents nine personal leadership capacities that authentic leaders find essential in their work when facilitating large-scale, complex, transformational change in organisations and communities. Furthermore, it suggests practices (ranging from contemplative and spiritual to physical, engaging both head, heart and hands) that help in developing your personal leadership capacities.
  • and here is the link to the website, where you can download a copy or view it online.
  • they even had a webinar on the same topic (July 2011) with the 21st Century Network, the recording of which you can access. You sign on as a guest adding your name (no password is needed) and click the play arrow in the middle of the screen and it will play for you.
• Another master thesis from the same school in Karlskrona, by Tracy Meisterheim, Steven Cretney and Alison Cretney. There announcements reads:
  • The Weave provides guidance for sustainability practitioners wishing to more deeply engage people in creating their sustainable future.
    The Weave integrates the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD), also known as The Natural Step Framework, with strategic process design principles and dialogue-based methodologies. The FSSD is the skeleton that provides the structure of planning for sustainability, while the ABCD process provides a high-level approach for moving through the strategic planning stages in a step-wise manner.
  • As they say: "This guide includes the collective input of twenty
    two sustainability and hosting practitioners from around the world, including the founder of the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD), Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt, and co-founder of the Art of Hosting, Toke Paludan Møller. Our work was recognizing overarching patterns and synthesizing them into principles and strategic guidance for process design."
  • You can download The Weave on their website, or buy the printed book; also a link to the full text of the thesis.
  • or download it from here: 110700 TheWeave AoH-Sustainab.pdf

   

  
  

• Sebastian Vith wrote a master thesis "Dialogic Self-Management: Transforming Organizational Cultures from Within" at Innsbruck University for a degree on Organisation Studies.
• Not directly linked with Art of Hosting (alone) but a lot with Open Space Technology is a PhD thesis by Tonnie van der Zouwen, on the effective use of Large Scale Interventions (seen as an approach for whole system change, including the large group intervention methods such as Future Search, Open Space Technology, World Café, Whole Scale Change/Real Time Strategic Change). Available in book form with the title ‘Building an evidence based practical guide to Large Scale Interventions. Towards sustainable organisational change with the whole system’. It is published by Eburon Academic Publishers and available as paperback and as eBook on amazon.com and eburon.nl.