Search results

In this chapter we are exploring Appreciative Inquiry within organizations through the dialogic process in its relational aspect. The present discussion is composed of four parts: An exploration of the myriad meanings of dialogue and a description of a useful orienting platform, dialogue as “discursive coordination.” We then turn to the pivotal function of dialogue in the organizing process and the development of a vocabulary of discursive action with practical consequences for effective organizing. We next turn to the problematic potentials of dialogue. A contrast between generative and degenerative dialogue enables us to explore how certain forms of coordination ultimately lead to organizational growth or demise. Among our conclusions we propose that dialogue originates in public, is a form of joint-action, is embodied and contextually embedded, as well as historically and culturally situated. Dialogue may serve both positive and negative ends. Described are four aspects of dialogue – an emphasis on affirmation, productive difference, coherence, and temporal integration. Appreciative inquiry adds an enormously important element to the transformative potentials of dialogue. Other transformative practices and potentials are also described.

Drawing from a social constructionist theory and its related practices, we propose the realization of transformative dialogue, a form of dialogue that may bring conflicting communities into more viable forms of coordination. We outline a range of conversational resources stressing relational responsibility, self-expression, affirmation, coordination, reflexivity, and the co-creation of new realities. The analysis is further extended through a case study of improvisation and organizational change. There is no attempt in the present article to suggest a set of relational rules. The attempt is to generate a potentially useful vocabulary of action, rather than a set of rules for negotiating among incommensurate realities.

This qualitative descriptive research study served to clarify sustained social and economic natures of African business innovation and entrepreneurial development leadership. The research question included interviewed African leader participants (5), “How do you describe your experience in African leadership?” In-depth phone interview responses detailed familiar leadership words and phrases about historic, cultural, and economic environments. African leaders described how they understand, discover, observe, and share perspectives on African leadership experiences for personal hardship, survival, and societal, cultural, physical, and organizational change. Using phenomenological research methods, transcript analysis of interview experience responses integrated common properties. Verbatim transcriptions, and reading, sifting, combining, reducing, and interpreting the data collection resulted in thematic coding and categorizing. Investigation results included interpreted meaning for facilitated interactions in African leadership descriptions. Study conclusions highlighted many, varied, and unusual pathways for African leadership, rather than a single model. Sensitivities to participative, divergent, and non-linear thinking characterized transformational African leadership styles (Green, 2014). Possible research implications contributed to future work, connecting the study findings with Network Theory.

It’s been thirty years since the original articulation of “Appreciative Inquiry in Organizational Life” was written in collaboration with my remarkable mentor Suresh Srivastva (Cooperrider & Srivastva, 1987). That article – first published in Research in Organization Development and Change – generated more experimentation in the field, more academic excitement, and more innovation than anything we had ever written. As the passage of time has enabled me to look more closely at what was written, I feel both a deep satisfaction with the seed vision and scholarly logic offered for Appreciative Inquiry, as well as well as the enormous impact and continuing reverberation. Following the tradition of authors such as Carl Rogers who have re-issued their favorite works but have also added brief reflections on key points of emphasis, clarification, or editorial commentary I am presenting the article by David Cooperrider (myself) and the late Suresh Srivastva in its entirety, but also with new horizon insights. In particular I write with excitement and anticipation of a new OD – what my colleagues and I are calling the next “IPOD” that is, innovation-inspired positive OD that brings AI’s gift of new eyes together in common cause with several other movements in the human sciences: the strengths revolution in management; the positive pscyhology and positive organizational scholarship movements; the design thinking explosion; and the biomimicry field which is all about an appreciative eye toward billions of years of nature’s wisdom and innovation inspired by life.

This article presents a conceptual refigurationy of action-research based on a “sociorationalist” view of science. The position that is developed can be summarized as follows: For action-research to reach its potential as a vehicle for social innovation it needs to begin advancing theoretical knowledge of consequence; that good theory may be one of the best means human beings have for affecting change in a postindustrial world; that the discipline’s steadfast commitment to a problem solving view of the world acts as a primary constraint on its imagination and contribution to knowledge; that appreciative inquiry represents a viable complement to conventional forms of action-research; and finally, that through our assumptions and choice of method we largely create the world we later discover.

It’s been nearly 30 years since the original articulation of Appreciative Inquiry in Organizational Life was written in collaboration with my remarkable mentor Suresh Srivastva (Cooperrider & Srivastva, 1987). That article generated more experimentation in the field, more academic excitement, and more innovation than anything we had ever written. As the passage of time has enabled me to look more closely at what was written, I feel both a deep satisfaction with the seed vision and scholarly logic offered for Appreciative Inquiry (AI), as well as well as the enormous impact and reverberation. Following the tradition of authors such as Carl Rogers who have re-issued their favorite works but have also added brief reflections on key points of emphasis, clarification, or editorial commentary we have decided to issue a reprint the early article by David L. Cooperrider and the late Suresh Srivastva in its entirety, but also with contemporary comments embedded. To be sure the comments offered are brief and serve principally to add points of emphasis to ideas we may have too hurriedly introduced. My comments – placed in indented format along the way – are focused on the content and themes of furthermost relevance to this volume on organizational generativity. In many ways I’ve begun to question today whether there can even be inquiry where there is no appreciation, valuing, or amazement – what the Greeks called thaumazein – the borderline between wonderment and admiration. One learning is that AI’s generativity is not about its methods or tools, but about our cooperative capacity to reunite seeming opposites such as theory as practice, the secular as sacred, and generativity as something beyond positivity or negativity. Appreciation is about valuing the life-giving in ways that serve to inspire our co-constructed future. Inquiry is the experience of mystery, moving beyond the edge of the known to the unknown, which then changes our lives. Taken together, where appreciation and inquiry are wonderfully entangled, we experience knowledge alive and an ever-expansive inauguration of our world to new possibilities.

This article presents a conceptual refiguration of action-research based on a “sociorationalist” view of science. The position that is developed can be summarized as follows: For action-research to reach its potential as a vehicle for social innovation it needs to begin advancing theoretical knowledge of consequence; that good theory may be one of the best means human beings have for affecting change in a postindustrial world; that the discipline's steadfast commitment to a problem solving view of the world acts as a primary constraint on its imagination and contribution to knowledge; that appreciative inquiry represents a viable complement to conventional forms of action-research; and finally, that through our assumptions and choice of method we largely create the world we later discover.