"Bad" and "good" meetings

In our new reading (Organizational Learning and Culture by Edgar Shein), Shein discusses some of his personal experiences when he was a consultant as he came up against culture in the organizations he was working with. On page 10 in his "Cambridge-at-home" example, he mentions that his consensus building technique used during their meetings was lauded by some and hailed as poor practice and just plain "bad" by others. He asks why this would be so.
I think that this is a clearly cultural phenomenon. Many people are educated into a paradigm where classrooms, meetings, schedules, and the "way things are" must be carried out in a specific and ordered manner. This is similar to having a positivist framework (everything has a positive answer, there is a reality which is "correct" and knowledge is the act of uncovering what is "real" and "true") rather than a constructivist framework which accepts that knowledge is individualistic, constructed through interpretation and subject to evolution. That is the more philosophical way to see this.
Or it might simply be that those individuals have been taught (in Pavolvian fashion) to associate "meetings" with certain sets of structure - such as an agenda, a single leader and a passive audience. They are most likely far out of their comfort zone being asked to participate actively, share in the construction of knowledge, or have to grapple with problems that have no clear cut answers.
In any case, in education it has become essential to understand how people come to acquire this type of thinking, because the push is toward creative problem solving and socially constructed knowledge (which is what we consider critical thinking) and away from positivism. So, my question (and there is most likely no defined answer - ha ha) is this: what are some ways to effectively teach adults to be comfortable in environments where socially constructed knowledge is the norm and where meetings are built on consensus through active participation? What are some of the obstacles? What are some of the consequences of the presence of both paradigms?

On Language and Culture

Now that we are tackling culture, I am interested in understanding the linkages between language and culture within an organization. In our IBM studies, we found that when Gerstner took the helm at IBM, he radically redefined the organization's culture in order to effect the changes which he wanted to take place within the organization. One avenue which he used to do this was to do away with some of the esoteric language which had previously been used and introduce a common language which was accessible to everyone. In the interviews which we conducted, we heard repeatedly how in the years after the Lotus acquisition, language within IBM changed from "client" to "customer" from "company" to "firm," etc. This shift in language was an important part of the cultural change process.
Furthermore, in my "spare time" I have been reading a book by Guy Deutscher, a linguist, called Through the Language Glass (2010, Metropolitan Books, New York, NY). In it, he explores the idea that our understandings are implicitly linked in fundamental ways to our language and its subsequent restrictions. He implies that the important aspects of culture and language are "those where culture masquerades as human nature" (p. 9). Since human nature is something which we have discussed in class, I was wondering what aspects of culture influence the way that we behave within an organization which previously would have been labelled "human nature?" Can you identify some aspects of behavior within an organization which you would have previously thought were merely part of human nature but which, upon a second glance, were actually learned as part of the tacit knowledge in the organization?
Or, if you prefer, how does the language in an organization define and steer the growth of organizational culture?