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AbstractThis paper uses a grounded theory methodology to develop a conceptual model of the main concerns of the partners and the social and decision‐making processes associated with establishing public–private alliances in official development assistance programmes. The results suggest that the establishment of PPAs is the result of the complex interaction of 'Processes and Process Issues', 'Alliance Initiation', 'Alliance Leadership', 'Modifiers' and 'Alliance Relationships'. Although individual alliance is context specific, there are five key areas where attention should be focussed during the establishment and where the participants can potentially influence the establishment to optimise the chance of success. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This article, framed in relational dialectics theory, argues for dialogic creativity as an alternative to extant companionate and institutional conceptualizations of marital quality. Dialogic creativity—dialogue—forecloses monologic calcification of meaning in marriage, including the evaluative judgment of what constitutes marital quality, through the ongoing interplay of competing discourses. Four potential discursive sites are discussed through the Bakhtinian concept of the utterance chain as a way to frame the kinds of discursive struggles that are prevalent in marriage; two of these discursive sites capture struggles among sociocultural discourses, and two capture struggles among idiosyncratic systems of meaning that reflect the unique history of a given marriage and the unique pattern of similarities and differences between partners in a given marriage. Dialogic creativity is enacted communicatively through three forms of dialogic expansion: diachronic separation, synchronic interplay, and hybrid and aesthetic‐moment enactments. The three kinds of communicative practices are contrasted with dialogically contractive monologue, in which a single monolithic discourse silences all competing discourses in the struggle of meaning.

AbstractThis article discusses five interrelated conceptions of dialogue in the works of Russian scholar Mikhail Bakhtin that ground relational dialectics theory: (a) dialogue as constitutive process, (b) dialogue as dialectical flux, (c) dialogue as aesthetic moment, (d) dialogue as utterance, and (e) dialogue as critical sensibility. The author's recent research in relational dialectics is discussed, as are directions for future research. Relational dialectics is positioned as a sensitizing theory different from systems theory and other dialectically oriented approaches.

AbstractThis article first provides an overview and brief history of relational dialectics theory (RDT) before turning to a presentation of RDT's basic tenets and theoretical utility. In addition, it also examines how RDT has been applied in studying family contexts and offers suggestions for future directions of RDT‐based research.

This study examined family rules about nutrition, exercise, and sun protection in 164 parent–young adult children dyads. Both parents and their young adult children independently reported on health rules that they perceived throughout their child's adolescent years and the extent to which the rules were articulated, violations sanctioned, and modeled. Neither child nor parent perceptions of rule‐related communication during adolescence predicted current young adult behaviors for any of the 3 health domains. Perceived rule compliance during adolescence was predicted from rule articulation across health domains, whereas patterns for sanctioning and parental modeling varied by health domain. Parents reported higher rule articulation than was perceived by their children across health domains and selectively reported higher scores on both sanctioning and modeling.