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Images and ideals of organization design have changed dramatically in the past decade in response to the need for a redirection in the purpose and strategy as well as leadership styles following the global economy, new brave networked world, emerging new forms of organizing, and social innovations. This chapter is an invitation to explore a new genre of organization design and organizing as if life matters. It is a call to embrace organizations designed to affirm, nurture, and sustain life. The chapter discusses two key questions: “What Gives Life to Human Organizing” and “What Are We Designing.” The first part aims to uncover what gives life to human organizing through an exploration of nine principles of appreciative organizing. The second part aims to expand what we mean when we talk about organization design through an examination of six fundamental structures that seem to be at play in organized action.

Extending the argument made in Bushe and Marshak (2009) of the emergence of a new species of Organization Development (OD) that we label Dialogic, to differentiate it from the foundational Diagnostic form, we argue that how any OD method is used in practice will be depend on the mindset of the practitioner. Six variants of Dialogic OD practice are reviewed and compared to aid in identification of a Weberian ideal-type Dialogic Mindset, consisting of eight premises that distinguish it from the foundational Diagnostic Mindset. Three core change processes that underlie all successful Dialogic OD processes are proposed, and suggestions for future research offered.

This chapter creates a logic that links the transformation of organizational consciousness with the creation of a more life affirming global consciousness. In it the author examines the relationship between the practice of Appreciative Inquiry, the concept of organizational consciousness and the need for global transformation. She suggests that Appreciative Inquiry, with its life giving focus, is uniquely suited to simultaneously bring about change in organizations and society through the elevation and evolution of organizational consciousness. Recognizing the need for transformation on a global scale, she challenges the field of organization development to move beyond the metaphor of organization culture toward the metaphor of organizational consciousness. Cultures are defined and bounded by national and corporate borders. Consciousness is all pervasive. It knows not boundaries of organizations, countries nor continents. Appreciative Inquiry practices, that involve the whole system in valuing the best of what is, envisioning generative possibilities and creating life-sustaining organizations, hold great potential for the evolution of organizational consciousness.

Takes a social constructionist view of organizational change focusing on how to engage the multitude of internal and external stakeholders. Argues that current models of change often leave people feeling demoralized and presents appreciative inquiry (AI) as an aproach to organization development that deliberately focuses attention on learning and dialogue about what gives life to an organization. Explains AI principles and the 4‐D model for positive change. Provides some examples of this.

Appreciative Inquiry has clearly made a significant impact on the field of organization development and change. This article presents an assessment of 50 studies based on a review of more than 400 publications and papers. The article covers four sections: first, an overview of the growing significance of AI since the initial Cooperrider and Srivastva article in 1987, with a brief summary of the history, definition, awards, and chronological presentation of the growing body of AI literature. The second section presents a description of the data search process and descriptions of data categories. The third section describes the nature and extent of AI activities and results based on the review of the 50 studies. The final section includes a summary and discussion of the current state of Appreciative Inquiry.

This chapter is motivated by the author’s desire to show that appreciative inquiry (AI) has developed over the course of its history by responding to client needs, gradually enlarging the scope of its capabilities, tracing the evolution of AI from a strengths-based approach into a catalyst for flourishing and wholeness. The purpose is to share how AI has inspired the business community to embrace generative language and increase awareness of the larger system in which it operates. The chapter reviews a series of cases – including Rava Packaging (to incorporate sustainability), Nutrimental Foods (a whole system intervention), Telefonica (to increase employee commitment), and the São Paulo State Federation of Industries (to support Millennium Development Goals) – in which the author and others facilitated. The interventions involved positive dialogue and appreciative interviewing. Through its capacity for generativity, AI has created greater commitment to and engagement within organizations, stronger collaboration among multiple stakeholders that benefits business and society, and deeper and lasting commitment to profound transformation in service of flourishing. The chapter contributes to a better understanding of how, at each stage in its evolution, AI has supported business by helping to expand its positive narrative and helping organizations become agents for world benefit.

Appreciative Inquiry is a constructive inquiry process that searches for everything that “gives life” to organizations, communities, and larger human systems when they are most alive, effective, creative and healthy in their interconnected ecology of relationships. To appreciate, quite simply, means to value and to recognize that which has value – it is a way of knowing and valuing the best in life. In the language of Positive Organizational Scholarship it means a research focus – a positive bias – seeking fresh understanding of dynamics described by words like excellence, thriving, abundance, resilience, or exceptional and life-giving (Cameron, Dutton & Quinn, 2003). In this context the word appreciate means to value those things of value – it is a mode of knowing often connected to the idea of esthetic appreciation in the arts. To appreciate also means to be grateful or thankful for – it is a way of being and maintaining a positive stance along the path of life’s journey. And not incidentally, to appreciate is to increase in value too. Combining the three – appreciation as a way of knowing, as a way of being and as an increase in value- suggests that Appreciative Inquiry is simultaneously a life-centric form of study and a constructive mode of practice. As a form of study, Appreciative Inquiry focuses on searching systematically for those capacities and processes that give life and strength and possibility to a living system; and as a constructive mode of practice, it aims at designing and crafting human organizations through a process in which valuing and creating are viewed as one, and where inquiry and change are powerfully related and understood as a seamless and integral whole. But the key to really understanding Appreciative Inquiry is to put the emphasis on the second word in the inseparable pair. While many are intrigued with the Appreciative Inquiry positive bias – toward the good, the better, the exceptional, and the possible – it is the power of inquiry we must learn more about and underscore. Inquiry is all about openness, curiosity, creative questioning; its spirit involves what Whitehead once called “the adventure of ideas.”