Cooperrider is the founder, together with Suresh Srivastva, of the theory of Appreciative Inquiry.[4] Cooperrider's original doctoral dissertation "Appreciative Inquiry Into Organizational Life" has been cited as “the first, and as yet, the best articulation of the theory and vision of appreciative inquiry.”[5] It was completed and defended in 1985.
Appreciative Inquiry was articulated first as a method for building generative theory. It was a call for "a scholarship of the positive," focusing attention on "what gives life" to human and ecological systems when they are most alive. Appreciative Inquiry is related to theories and practices such as organization development,[7]strengths-based management, appliedpositive psychology, evaluation studies, change management, coaching and counseling, corporate strategy, sustainable development, social constructionism, design thinking, biomimicry, and learning theory.[8]
In a New York Times best-selling book, Marcus Buckingham concluded that the theory of Appreciative Inquiry was one of the three most important academic catalysts for the strengths revolution in management. Beyond the seminal work of Cooperrider and Srivastva, the other two giant sources of the strengths revolution in management included Peter Drucker's Effective Executive and Martin Seligman's call for a Positive Psychology in 2000. Together, appreciative inquiry, Drucker's management theory, and positive psychology have created a society-wide positive-strengths movement "because it works."[9]
What is big idea of Appreciative Inquiry? It began with the observation that ever since Taylorism, managers, researchers and consultants have seen organizations not only in machine-like terms, but in deficit-based terms as "problems to be solved" or fixed. True to Abraham Maslow's observation that "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail," those same managers and consultants became, over the years, quite good at finding, analyzing, and sometimes solving problems in organizations. So much so that organizations became problems personified—and hence a whole vocabulary of deficit-based change grew up centered on concepts like "gap analysis," "organizational diagnosis," "root causes of failure," "resistance," "unfreezing," "needs analysis," "threat analysis," and the need for high levels of dissatisfaction and urgent "burning platforms." Much like diagnostic medicine with its focus on illness, management had become locked in a problem-analytic view of the world, especially when it came to concepts and tools for managing change.[10]
Early in the 1980s almost two decades before the positive psychology field was christened, Cooperrider began to question the deficit-based change field and the root metaphor that "human systems are problems to be solved." He observed that the pervasive problematizing perspective was constraining and limiting, just as industrial era machine metaphors were also limiting. Cooperrider and Srivastva, in their earliest work at the acclaimed the Cleveland Clinic, engaged in a radical reversal of the traditional problem-analytic approach. Influenced by the writings of Albert Schweitzer on "reverence for life," they determined that organizations are not institutional machines incessantly in need of repair and that deteriorate steadily and over time. Rather organizations are, fundamentally, living systems and centers of human relatedness, alive and embedded in amplifying networks of infinite strengths.
Instead of "problems to be solved," human systems are "mysteries to be appreciated." In a real way they are products of the miracle of human interaction and relatedness. The more we study "what gives life" versus "what’s wrong," the more we move in the direction or become what we study. Instead of studying low morale, for example, we should study human flourishing in the workplace "because human systems move in the direction of what they study." The simple act of observation in a human system changes the phenomenon itself. In another realm this concept has been called the Hawthorne effect. But in human systems, the result is even more powerful. Cooperrider called it "the exponential inquiry effect" to indicate how our first questions, like the early stage of a snowball, can grow into exponential tipping point movements. That's why he writes: "We live in worlds our questions create."[11]
In a classic conversation between Cooperrider and Peter Drucker, they found something in common: a realization that strengths do more than perform, they transform. For Drucker, the development of an appreciative eye is, in essence, the first task of great leadership. "What is leadership all about?" he asked, "Leadership is about the creation of an alignment of strengths in ways that make a system’s weaknesses irrelevant." That is what appreciative inquiry does: it provides the theory and tools for (1) the elevation of systemic strengths; (2) the unification and configuration of systemic strengths; and (3) the magnification of systemic strengths outward into society, that is, the discovery and design of positive institutions that bring our highest human strengths, such as love and courage, into the world.[12]
Today, Appreciative Inquiry's strengths-based tools and social constructionist concepts of human knowledge have been translated into many practices: the "4-D" action-research cycle of discovery, dream, design, and destiny; the Appreciative Inquiry Large Group Summit method; the art of the "unconditional positive question"; the SOAR approach to corporate strategy (versus SWOT); AI Executive Coaching; the Appreciative Inquiry massive online planning and design studio; generative metaphor intervention; the worldwide appreciative inquiry into Business as an Agent of World Benefit; and many others.[13]
What is so noteworthy about Appreciative Inquiry as a social construction is that it was treated, right from the beginning before open source, in an open, collaborative kind of way. Cooperrider made a decision early on: no trademarks or copyrights. In fact, Cooperrider always put on the cover pages of notes and his slides, just the opposite of copyright: he said instead used "right to copy." As a result, the collective creativity of the whole AI community and field, and its impacts into organization development, positive psychology, social constructionist thought, family therapy, and strengths-based management has burgeoned. The "Appreciative Inquiry Commons" was formed as a web platform for the free and full sharing of Appreciative Inquiry resources.[13]
David L. Cooperrider Center for Appreciative Inquiry
The David L. Cooperrider Center for Appreciative Inquiry, located in the Robert P. Stiller School of Business at Champlain College, is a comprehensive hub for connecting students to learn, apply, and amplify Appreciative Inquiry. The center was dedicated on November 8, 2014, and is the only academic center in the world focused entirely on Appreciative Inquiry.[14] The center is run by former Cooperrider graduate student and now Academic Director of the center, Dr. Lindsey Godwin. The stated purpose of the Center is to educate leaders to be the best in the world at seeing the best for the world, in order to discover and design positive institutions – organizations and communities that elevate, magnify, and bring our highest human strengths to the practice of positive organizational development and change.[15]
Cooperrider serves as honorary chair of the Center, acts as strategic consultant for the Robert P. Stiller School of Business at Champlain College, and participates in executive workshops at the College's Burlington, Vermont campus and in other locations.
"The Stiller School of Business at Champlain College welcomes Dr. Cooperrider ...," said Donald Laackman, president of Champlain College. "Teaming with Dr. Cooperrider, our growing network of scholars, executives and certified Appreciative Inquiry practitioners will demonstrate and teach how strengths-based organizations can and do succeed."[14]
Impact
Cooperrider's impact on the fields of leadership, human development and management theory is significant.[7] His work at Case Western Reserve University in the early 1980s on Appreciative Inquiry anticipated and helped bring about today's positive psychology movement, strengths-based leadership models, and positive organizational scholarship (POS). Kim S. Cameron, Robert Quinn and Jane Dutton called Appreciative Inquiry “a pillar.” Management scholar Robert Quinn, in a 2000 book Change the World declared that “Appreciative Inquiry is revolutionizing the field of organization development.”[16]
Nobel Laureate Kofi Annan, likewise, wrote these words after calling upon David Cooperrider as an advisor and using Appreciative Inquiry to bring over 500 CEO's into a world summit at the United Nations:[17] “Without your innovative methodology of Appreciative Inquiry, it would have been very difficult, perhaps even impossible, to constructively engage so many leaders of business, civil society, and government.” A UN Leaders report for the Global Compact's 8,000 corporations said “Appreciative Inquiry is the best large group method in the world today.” [18]
All of this also affected the experiential learning field, including his most recent work focused on "Flourishing Organizations."[19] In 2000, for his contribution to organizational learning and development, Cooperrider was given the "Distinguished Contribution Award to Workplace Performance and Learning" by the American Society for Training and Development.
Then, in 2004, for his world inquiry with Ron Fry into Business as an Agent of World Benefit, the Aspen Institute gave him the “Faculty Pioneer Award for Impact” in the domain of sustainable development. That work, including his book with Jane Dutton on The Organization Dimensions of Global Change: No Limits to Cooperation, has given birth to two major institutions and endowments: The Fowler Center for Sustainable Value and the ongoing global forum series hosted by Case Western Reserve University in partnership with the United Nations Global Compact and Academy of Management titled “The Global Forum for Business as an Agent of World Benefit.”[20]
According to Ode Magazine, "In the field of Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability, Cooperrider leads the movement towards a more sustainable future, ...". [21]
Bibliography
Cooperrider has published numerous books and authored more than 60 articles and book chapters. His book with Diana Whitney Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive Revolution in Change has been a best-seller with multiple printings.[22] His original article on Appreciative Inquiry (with Suresh Srivastva) in 1987, which appeared in the series Research in Organizational Change and Development, Vol. 1, has become an important source for its field since publication.[23]
Cooperrider's writings include:
Books
1985, Appreciative Inquiry: A Methodology for Advancing Social Innovation. Phd Dissertation by David Cooperrider.
1990, Appreciative management and leadership: the power of positive thought in organizations coauthored with Suresh Srivastva.
1998, Organizational wisdom and executive courage coauthored with Suresh Srivastva.
1999, Appreciative Inquiry: Rethinking human organization toward a positive theory of change coauthored with Peter Sorenson, et al.
1999, The organizational dimensions of global change: No limits to cooperation coauthored with Jane Dutton.
2001, The Appreciative Organization coauthored with Harlene Anderson, et al.
2001, Encyclopedia of positive questions coauthored with Diana Whitney.
2004, Appreciative Inquiry handbook: For leaders of change coauthored with Diana Whitney and Jackie Stavros.
2004, Discourse and change in organizations. Volume one in Advances in Appreciative Inquiry coauthored with Michel Avital.
2005, Appreciative Inquiry: Foundations in positive organization development, coauthored with Peter Sorenson et al.
2005, Appreciative Inquiry: A positive revolution in change with Diana Whitney.
2007, Handbook of transformative cooperation coauthored with Sandy Piderit and Ronald Fry.
2007, Designing information and organizations with a positive lens (Volume Two in Advances in Appreciative Inquiry) coauthored with Michel Avital and Richard Boland.
2008, Essentials of Appreciative Inquiry coauthored with Diana Whitney and Jackie Stavros.
2010, Appreciative Inquiry and Sustainable Design (Volume Three in Advances in Appreciative Inquiry) coauthored with Tojo Thachenkery and Michel Avital.
2010, Developing Tomorrow's Leaders to Enact Corporate Citizenship: The Call and Opportunity for Business Schools coauthored with Ronald Fry.
2012, Advances in the AI Summit: Explorations into the Magic of Macro and Crowdsourcing coauthored with Lindsey Godwin et al.
2013, Appreciative Inquiry: An innovative approach to personal and organizational transformation with Miriam Subriana.
Management is the administration of organizations, whether they are a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government body through business administration, nonprofit management, or the political science sub-field of public administration respectively. It is the science of managing the resources of businesses, governments, and other organizations.
The United Religions Initiative (URI) is a global grassroots interfaith network.
Empowerment is the degree of autonomy and self-determination in people and in communities. This enables them to represent their interests in a responsible and self-determined way, acting on their own authority. It is the process of becoming stronger and more confident, especially in controlling one's life and claiming one's rights. Empowerment as action refers both to the process of self-empowerment and to professional support of people, which enables them to overcome their sense of powerlessness and lack of influence, and to recognize and use their resources.
Positive psychology is a branch of psychology that studies the conditions that contribute to the optimal functioning of people, groups, and institutions. It studies "positive subjective experience, positive individual traits, and positive institutions... it aims to improve quality of life." It is a field of study that has grown as individuals and researchers look for common ground on better well-being.
Appreciative inquiry (AI) is a model that seeks to engage stakeholders in self-determined change. According to Gervase Bushe, professor of leadership and organization development at the Beedie School of Business and a researcher on the topic, "AI revolutionized the field of organization development and was a precursor to the rise of positive organization studies and the strengths based movement in American management." It was developed at Case Western Reserve University's department of organizational behavior, starting with a 1987 article by David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva. They felt that the overuse of problem solving hampered any kind of social improvement, and what was needed were new methods of inquiry that would help generate new ideas and models for how to organize.
Peter Ferdinand Drucker was an Austrian-American management consultant, educator, and author, whose writings contributed to the philosophical and practical foundations of modern management theory. He was also a leader in the development of management education, and invented the concepts known as management by objectives and self-control, and he has been described as "the founder of modern management".
SWOT analysis is a strategic planning and strategic management technique used to help a person or organization identify Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats related to business competition or project planning. It is sometimes called situational assessment or situational analysis. Additional acronyms using the same components include TOWS and WOTS-UP.
The Claremont Graduate University (CGU) is a private, all-graduate research university in Claremont, California. Founded in 1925, CGU is a member of the Claremont Colleges consortium which includes five undergraduate and two graduate institutions of higher education.
The Weatherhead School of Management is a private business school of Case Western Reserve University located in Cleveland, Ohio. Weatherhead offers programs concentrated in sustainability, design innovation, healthcare, organizational behavior, global entrepreneurship, and executive education. The school is named for benefactor and Weatherchem owner Albert J. Weatherhead III, and its principal facility is the Peter B. Lewis Building.
Personal development or self-improvement consists of activities that develop a person's capabilities and potential, build human capital, facilitate employability, enhance quality of life, and facilitate the realization of dreams and aspirations. Personal development may take place over the course of an individual's entire lifespan and is not limited to one stage of a person's life. It can include official and informal actions for developing others in roles such as teacher, guide, counselor, manager, coach, or mentor, and it is not restricted to self-help. When personal development takes place in the context of institutions, it refers to the methods, programs, tools, techniques, and assessment systems offered to support positive adult development at the individual level in organizations.
Richard Eleftherios Boyatzis is a Greek American organizational theorist and Distinguished University Professor in the Departments of Organizational Behavior, Psychology, and Cognitive Science at Case Western Reserve University, Adjunct Professor in People/Organizations at ESADE, as well as HR Horvitz Professor of Family Business. He is considered an expert in the field of emotional intelligence, behavior change, and competence.
Leadership studies is a multidisciplinary academic field of study that focuses on leadership in organizational contexts and in human life. Leadership studies has origins in the social sciences, in humanities, as well as in professional and applied fields of study. The field of leadership studies is closely linked to the field of organizational studies.
Sheila McNamee is an American academic known for her work in human communication and social constructionism theory and practice. She is a Professor of Communication at the University of New Hampshire and founding member, Vice President and board member of the Taos Institute. She has authored numerous, books, chapters, and journal articles. Her work focuses on appreciative dialogic transformation within a variety of social and institutional contexts including psychotherapy, organizations, education, healthcare, and local communities. She engages constructionist practices in a variety of contexts to bring communities of participants with diametrically opposing viewpoints together to create livable futures.
Diana Whitney is an American author, award-winning consultant and educator whose writings – 15 books and dozens of chapters and articles – have advanced the positive principles and practices of appreciative inquiry and social constructionist theory worldwide. Her work as a scholar practitioner has furthered both research and practice in the fields of appreciative leadership and positive organization development. She was awarded Vallarta Institute’s Annual 2X2 Recreate the World Award.
William James Reddin also known as Bill Reddin was a British-born management behavioralist, theorist, writer, and consultant. His published works examined and explained how managers in profit and non-profit organizations behaved under certain situations and conditions. The focus of his work was to understand to what extent managers were effective in their role and successful in managing situations to have the right impact on the organization's objectives.
Appreciative advising (AA) is an academic advising philosophy that provides a framework for optimizing student-advisor interactions both in 1:1 and group settings. Appreciative advising is based on David Cooperrider's organizational development theory of appreciative inquiry. Appreciative advising also draws from positive psychology, social constructivist theory, and choice theory.
Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is an approach that believes improvement is more engaging when the focus is made on the strengths rather than the weaknesses. People tend to respond to positive statements but react to negative statements that concern them. Children are more sensitive to their self-worth and thrive on what makes them feel good, what makes them feel accepted, included and recognized. AI is a powerful tool that can be used in the field of Education to enable children discover what is good about them and dream of what they can do with this realization. Children of today are very sensitive and make decisions in haste which sometimes costs them their lives. In such a situation, AI plays a very vital role.
Nadya Zhexembayeva is an author, educator and business owner. She has written four and contributed to six books about business, strategy, reinvention and sustainability. In 2009, Dr. Zhexembayeva co-authored the concept of "embedded sustainability", in 2015 introduced the term "Chief Reinvention Officer," and in 2015 introduced the concept of "Titanic Syndrome", which she developed into a book in 2018. Nadya is the author of The Reinvention Method, which as of 2021 consists of nine tools bridging the fields of strategy, foresight, design thinking, SCRUM/Agile, organization development, leadership and change management. She is also a member of the Academic Committee of CEDEP.
Harbarian process modeling (HPM) is a method for obtaining internal process information from an organization and then documenting that information in a visually effective, simple manner.
Coaching psychology is a field of applied psychology that applies psychological theories and concepts to the practice of coaching. Its aim is to increase performance, self-actualization, achievement and well-being in individuals, teams and organisations by utilising evidence-based methods grounded in scientific research. Coaching psychology is influenced by theories in various psychological fields, such as humanistic psychology, positive psychology, learning theory and social psychology.
↑ Godwin, Lindsey N.; Kaplan, Pascal; Bodiford, Kristin (2013). "The Exponential Inquiry Effect Magnified: The New AI Summit in a Technologically Connected World". Organizational Generativity: The Appreciative Inquiry Summit and a Scholarship of Transformation. Advances in Appreciative Inquiry. Vol.4. Emerald Publishing Limited. pp.249–274. doi:10.1108/S1475-9152(2013)0000004009. ISBN9781848554887.
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