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Appreciative Inquiry: Releasing the Power of the Positive?
It invites action researchers to ask positive questions about what gives **= Conclusion Ever since Descartes, the Western intellectual tradition has suffered from a form of epistemological schizophrenia (Popkin, 1979). Its intent of building knowledge and “discovering truth” to enhancing the human condition is a noble one, yet its methodological starting point of doubt and negation undermine its intent. It sucks Western science into a never-ending vortex of critique and repudiation that leaves it ill-equipped to construct compelling alternatives. Appreciative inquiry is in the business of building alternatives. It suggests that the journey into critique is a seductive but unnecessary detour. By asking the positive question it invites organizational members
Date: 3/9/2021 10:09:23 PM ( 3 y ) ... viewed 1041 times The Linguistic and Organizational Consequences of Critique Scholars and practitioners alike are becoming increasingly disillusioned with the destructive consequences of critical social and organizational science
(Rorty, 1980;
Wollheim, 1980;
Weick, 1982;
George, 1989;
Hazelrigg, 1989;
De Bono, 1992;
Friere, 1994;
Brown, 1994;
Marcus, 1994).
Gergen (1994a)
claim that while the initial purpose of this critical and de-constructive work was to attack the assumptions of empiricist foundationalism -- such as cumulative knowledge, value-free theoretical formulations, unbiased observation, knowledge through hypothesis testing, and objective measurement of human processes -- more recently it has expanded to include a critique of all kinds. Expressing the pervasiveness and viciousness of critical scholarship, Gergen uses the language of war to describe it.
He writes: We now stand with a mammoth arsenal of critical weaponry at our disposal. The power of such technology is unmatched by anything within the scholarly traditions of longstanding. There is virtually no hypothesis, body of evidence, ideological stance, literary canon, value commitment, or logical edifice that cannot be dismantled, demolished, or derided with the implements at hand. Only rank prejudice, the force of habit, or the anguished retaliation of deflated egos can muster a defense against the intellectual explosives within our grasp.
Everywhere now in the academic world the capitalist exploiters, male chauvinist pigs, cultural imperialists, warmongers, WASP bigots, wimp liberals, and scientistic dogmatists are on the run...
The revolution is on, heads are rolling everywhere, there is no limit to the potential destruction (pp. 59-60). Gergen goes on to identify five consequences of the critical effort that destroy or erode human communities and the production of generative knowledge
(see Table I for a summary of the linguistic and organizational consequences of the critical effort).
The first is the containment of conversation. Critique gains both its purpose and its intelligibility from a preceding declaration.
Appreciative Inquiry: Releasing the Power of the Positive Question Abstract This chapter illustrates how appreciative inquiry can be used as a positive model of action research to dislodge reified vocabularies of human deficit and liberate the socially constructive potential of organizations and human communities.
It begins by demonstrating the ways in which critical forms of action research unwittingly diminish the generative potential of human communities by favoring problem-focused modes of inquiry.
Deficit-based questions lead to deficit-based conversations, which in turn lead to deficit-based patterns of action. Two case illustrations are offered to show how appreciative inquiry uses the power of the positive question to overturn the tyranny of deficit-based vocabularies and open up new alternatives for conversation and action.
It does this by dislodging the certainty of existing deficit constructions, creating spaces for new voices and languages to emerge, and expanding circles of dialogue to build a supportive context for the social construction of reality.
Introduction In their original formulation of appreciative inquiry, Cooperrider and Srivastva (1987) argues that action research has largely failed as an instrument for advancing “second-order” social-organizational transformation (where organizational paradigms, norms, ideologies, or values are changed in fundamental ways) because of its romance with critique at the expense of appreciation.
Action research, they claim, has maintained an unquestioned commitment to a secularized problem-oriented view of the world and thus has diminished the capacity of organizational researchers and practitioners to produce innovative theory capable of inspiring the imagination, commitment, and passionate dialogue required for the consensual re-ordering of social conduct.
In its continuous attempts to determine what is wrong with organizations, action research has lost the ability to see and understand what gives life to organizations and to discover ways to sustain and enhance that life-giving potential.
More than a method or technique, the appreciative mode of inquiry...engenders a reverence for life that draws the researcher to inquire beyond superficial appearances to deeper levels of the life-generating essentials and potentials of social existence.
That is, the action-researcher is drawn to affirm, and thereby illuminate, the factors and forces involved in organizing that serve to nourish the human spirit (Cooperrider and Srivastva, 1987, p. 131).
This chapter illustrates how appreciative inquiry, as a constructive mode of action research, can unleash a positive revolution of conversation and practice in organizations by unseating existing reified patterns of discourse, creating space for new voices and new discoveries, and expanding circles of dialogue to provide a community of support for innovative action.
It all begins with the framing of positive questions that guide inquiry agendas and focus organizational attention in the direction of the aspects of organizational existence – latent and explicit – that are most life-giving and life-sustaining for organizational members.
It invites action researchers to ask positive questions about what gives and sustains life in organizations and thereby enable the creation of powerful vocabularies of possibility – both in the day-to-day conversations of organizational members and in the social and organizational theory that gets produced – that drive a positive re-ordering of organizational life.
**
Appreciative Interview Protocol – Round 1
1. Think of a time in your entire experience with your organization when you have felt most excited, most engaged, and most alive. What were the forces and factors that made it a great experience? What was it about you, others, and your organization that made it a peak experience for you?
2. What do you value most about yourself, your work, and your organization?
3. What are your organization's best practices (ways you manage, approaches, traditions)?
4. What are the unique aspects of your culture that most positively affect the spirit, vitality, and effectiveness of your organization and its work?
5. What is the core factor that "gives life" to your organization?
6. What are the three most important hopes you have to heighten the health and vitality of your organization for the future?
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