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Purpose – Based on a case study of citizens’ summits in Amsterdam, this chapter examines competing aims bound up in attempts to create an in-between space where participants struggle to obtain a sense of belonging against the background of (non)diversity.

Methodology/Approach – A qualitative case study approach is used based on participant observation, informal talks with participants, and interviews with the summit organizers.

Findings – A citizens’ summit can be seen as an in-between space where narratives of citizens should dominate instead of (local) governmental rhetoric. Citizens´ summits create a voice for citizens who are normally less heard in the public debate. To what extent this can be achieved depends on how a summit enables a diversity of participants to practice dialogue, create common ground and share ownership of ideas, problems and solutions. Our findings provide insight into contested belonging within the democratic system in the Netherlands and elsewhere.

Social Implications – We suggest that belonging, space and diversity affect social boundaries between those in the electoral democratic system and those participating in citizens’ summits. Focussing on these can lead towards more inclusive democratic systems for all.

Originality/Value of the Paper – Citizens’ summits are often seen as a democratic tool that supplements the electoral democracy. This study looks at the interactions between participants, revealing much about the functioning of deliberative space in citizens’ summits. We also focus on the issue of participant diversity and how senses of belonging include or exclude sections of society.

This paper presents a framework to study organizational change using the metaphor of ritual. Concepts of myth and ritual facilitate understanding of change interventions. A qualitative study of Appreciative Inquiry helped answer the question: what mechanisms or processes explain the effect of the Appreciative Inquiry Summit? Four mechanisms, based on qualitative interviews and anthropological and sociological theory, explain why the AI Summit produces organizational change: (1) internal dialogue: recognizing a positive dimension and new vocabulary at the individual, interpersonal, and organizational levels of analysis; (2) communitas: the mechanism whereby new relationships form due to relational anti-structure; (3) commitment: how organization members cognitively and cathectically commit to the organization; and (4) longitudinal repetition: how sustained and continuous change involves repetition of ritual practices and the recognition.

This chapter shares the experience of National Grid to orchestrate two Appreciative Inquiry Summits in Massachusetts. One was framed around sustainability for the City of Worcester, Massachusetts, and the other was an industry-wide effort on energy efficiency in Massachusetts. The chapter demonstrates the potential for generative impact and transformation in complex and highly contentious environments. It also presents possible implications for the highly regulated energy utility industry and for the energy utilities that choose to lead the way.

The emergence of strengths-based management may be the management innovation of our time. Nearly every organization has been introduced to its precepts – for example, the insight that a person or organization will excel only by amplifying strengths, never by simply fixing weaknesses. But in spite of impressive returns, organizations and managers have almost all stopped short of the breakthroughs that are possible. With micro tools largely in place, the future of strengths management is moving increasingly to the macro-management level, as witnessed in the rapid and far-reaching use of large group methods such as the Appreciative Inquiry Summit and its next generation design-thinking summit. Macro means whole and, by definition, unites many improbable opposites – for example, it embraces top down and bottom up simultaneously. It is a prime time source of organizational generativity. But the rules of macro-management are different than any other kind, most certainly micro-management. A decade of research and successful prototyping with single organizations, regions and cities, extended enterprises, industries, and UN-level world summits reveals five “X” factors – a specific set of mutually reinforcing elements of success and organizational generativity – and provides a clear set of guidelines for when and how you can deploy the “whole system in the room” design summit to bring out the best in system collaboration. By analyzing the performance and impacts of six case studies of the “whole system in the room” Appreciative Inquiry design summit, this chapter provides a bird’s eye view of the opportunities, challenges, and exciting new vistas opening up in this the collaborative age – a time when systemic action and macro-management skill are the primary leverage points for game-changing innovation, scalable solutions, and generative organizing. The chapter concludes with a call for more research into the stages of large group dynamics and advances a metaphor from the leadership literature – the spark, the flame, and the torch – to give imagery to the “positive contagion” and “the concentration effect of strengths” that happens during an Appreciative Inquiry Summit where 100s and sometimes 1000s come together interactively and collaboratively to design the future.

The Appreciative Inquiry (AI) Summit methodology is a powerful organizational development tool for unleashing the generative capacity of human systems. When an AI Summit is executed seamlessly, the design and planning appears almost effortless. As we have learned, however, there are many nuances to this powerful tool and attention to detail is vital to delivering a successful Summit. This chapter offers a practical guide to designing and implementing an AI Summit in any organization. The chapter addresses many of the pragmatic issues that emerge when designing a summit and offers insight on how to best prepare an organization for what needs to happen during pre-summit preparations to ensure a strong focus on desired outcomes and advancing post-summit momentum.

The very nature of organizational life is transforming as collaborative technologies erase the prerequisite of co-location for collaboration. Using three example cases of which we have been a part, World Vision, the American Society for Association Executives, and Healthy Kids Healthy Schools, we illustrate how such technology is also augmenting the generative capacity of the Appreciative Inquiry (AI) Summit methodology. We then use the five principles of wikinomics that Tapscott and Williams (2010) identify as keys for organizational thrival into today’s digitally connected world: collaboration, openness, sharing, integrity, and interdependence, as a lens for examining how the virtually connected AI Summit is a whole-system change methodology that helps to promote these principles. The chapter concludes with lessons on integrating collaborative technology into summit designs and opportunities for future experiments in this domain.

Mesomobilization actors perform important structural and ideological roles for social movements. This paper examines the dilemmas confronting one such meso-level organization – the First Nations Summit – currently engaged in tri-partite treaty negotiations with the governments of British Columbia and Canada. Asymmetrical power relations between the negotiating parties leave the First Nations vulnerable to government strategies aimed at achieving “certainty” with minimal concessions on key issues such as Aboriginal Title, compensation, and governance. The paper considers the Summit's options for mobilizing its diverse and often reluctant constituents in order to gain leverage in the treaty process.

We live in a time of great change. Community leaders around the world face dilemmas in every aspect of human living systems – social, economic, and environmental. We sit at a crossroads: do we try to fix what clearly is not working any longer or do we step up and design something new to achieve our desired outcomes? The leadership of Bibb County Schools (BCS) – faced with this very dilemma – stepped up to redesign their education system in a bold and exciting way. The road ahead was challenging and not at all guaranteed, but the conviction and strong leadership in the County was undaunted. This case study shares how BCS district, Macon, GA, is engaged the whole education system along with community leaders in a generative process to accelerate whole system positive change. Ultimately, their desired outcome was to generate a new educational system that would “ensure that all children receive a high-quality education that will prepare them to be competitive and successful in a global economy” (BCS, 2011). This chapter highlights key intervention strategies, including the important role that an Appreciative Inquiry summit played, in generating whole system change. We highlight the positive strides made to date and the challenges the County faces going forward. We conclude with recommendations leaders can use when considering a community-wide, whole system change effort.

This chapter explores the transformation that occurs during an Appreciative Inquiry (AI) summit through the lens of Rogerian client-centered therapy. The client-centered approach stems from the work of Carl Rogers, who theorized that humans have a tendency toward self-actualization, or that they can be trusted to move constructively toward the fulfillment of their inherent potential. According to Rogers, a client-centered therapeutic approach enables an individual to radically alter the self-concept and achieve transformational change, but only when six specific conditions are met. When these conditions are met, the result is generativity at the individual level as the client’s world opens up with new possibilities. Starting from the assumption that individuals and higher-level human systems share common elements as open systems, the opening up of the self-structure at the individual level can be seen as similar to the system coming together in a generative way during an AI summit. Rogerian theory and AI share a common set of underlying principles, and these principles guide the similar approach to change at these different levels. Here, a community AI summit in Worcester, Massachusetts, is viewed through a Rogerian lens in an attempt to shed light on how these conditions might also operate in higher-level human systems aimed at enabling generativity.