Change Handbook
GROUP METHODS FOR SHAPING THE FUTURE
Cindy Adams W.A. (Bill) Adams * Emily M.Axelrod » Richard H.Axelrod John Burbidge * David L. Cooperrider • Kathleen D. Dannemiller Tom Devane • Linda Ellinor • Merrelyn Emery • Alan Fitz • Gary Frank Gienna Gerard • Brian Heymans • Masaaki Imai * Robert W, Jacobs Sylvia L.James * Sandra Janoff * Alan Klein • Donald C. Klein Lawrence L. Lippitt • Frank McKeown 8 Barry Oshry a Harrison Owen Marilyn Oyler Todd Siler • Chris Soderquist * Anne Stadler Paul D.Tolchinsky e Marvin Weisbord * Diana Whitney
edited by Peggy Holman and Tom Devane
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david l. cooperrider and diana whitney
Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive Revolution in Change
Be the change you want to see in the world. —Gandhi
Historical Account
"Appreciative Inquiry (AI) begins an adventure. Even in the first steps, one senses an exciting direction in our language and theories of change—an invitation, as some have declared, to 'a positive revolution.'" The words just quoted are strong and, unfortunately, not ours. The more we replay the high-wire moments of our work at GTE, the more we ask the same question the people of GTE asked their senior executives: "Are you really ready for the momentum being generated? This is igniting a grass roots movement... it is creating an organization in full voice, a center stage for positive revolutionaries!"
Tom White, president of what was then called GTE Telops (making up 80 percent of GTE's 67,000 employees) replied with no hesitation: "Yes, and what I see in this meeting are zealots, people with a mission and passion for creating the new GTE. Count me in, I'm your number one recruit, number one zealot." People cheered.
Fourteen months later—based on significant and measurable changes in stock prices, morale survey measures, quality/customer relations, union-management relations, and so on—GTE's whole-system change initiative won the 1997 ASTD (American Society for Training and Development) award for
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best organization-change program in the country. Appreciative Inquiry was cited as the "backbone."
How Did GTE Do It?
Tom White interprets AI in executive language:
Appreciative Inquiry gets much better results than seeking out and solving problems. That's an interesting concept for me—and I imagine most of you—because telephone companies are among the world's best problem solvers. We concentrate enormous resources on correcting problems... when used continually over a long time, this approach leads to a negative culture. If you combine a negative culture with the challenges we face today, we could easily convince ourselves that we have too many problems to overcome—to slip into a paralyzing sense of hopelessness.... Don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating mindless happy talk, Appreciative Inquiry is a complex science designed to make things better. We can't ignore problems— we just need to approach them from the other side.1
What Tom White called "the other side" we describe as the positive change core. AI is a tool for connecting to the transformational power of this core by opening every strength, innovation, achievement, imaginative story, hope, positive tradition, passion, and dream to systematic inquiry. It involves asking appreciative questions, such as the following;
1. Describe a high-point experience in your organization, a time when you have been most alive and engaged.
2. Without being modest, tell me what is it that you most value about yourself, your work, your organization.
3. What are the core factors that give life to your organization, without which the organization would not be the same?
4. What three wishes do you have to enhance the health and vitality of your organization?
AI then uses the stories generated to create new, more compelling images of the organization and its future.
To achieve this stunning shift in the GTE culture, we asked, "How can we engage the positive potential of all employees toward transforming the company?" We wanted whatever we did to recognize and invite frontline employee self-sovereignty. We set a goal of creating a narrative-rich culture with a ratio of
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five positive stories to every negative one. We approached this in a number of ways:
• In year one, we taught Appreciative Inquiry to 800 front-line employees.
• We created opportunities for sharing "good news" stories. One executive volunteered to be the story center. The stories came into his office and he sent them out to other groups to share and replicate. Many were published in the company newsletter.
• Storytelling was embedded into various processes. For example, the President's Leadership Awards program focused on storytelling about the winning employees, their teams, and customer service,
• We added open-ended questions to the company employee survey and tracked the ratio of positive to negative comments.
• We created an Appreciative Inquiry storybook as a teaching tool for all employees.
• We introduced large-group (100-1,000 people) Appreciative Inquiry into strategic change arenas—for example, to design and affirm a new partnership model between the unions and GTE management at the most senior levels.
With these and many other activities, we focused GTE employees on their power to positively impact self-esteem, identity, and success—through the quality of their conversations and the stories they shared.
In the ten years since the Al theory and vision were published,2 hundreds of people have co-created AI practices, bringing AI's spirit and methodology into organizations all over the world. While the outcomes and illustrations we have selected are often dramatic, we emphasize that AI is in its infancy.
What hAppreciative Inquiry?
AI has been described in a myriad of ways: a radically affirmative approach to change that completely lets go of problem-based management,3 the most important advance in action research in the past decade,4 and organization development's philosopher's stone.5 Summing up AI is difficult—a philosophy of knowing, a methodology for managing change, an approach to leadership and human development. Here is a practice-oriented definition:
Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search for the best in people, their organizations, and the world around them. It involves systematic discovery of what gives a system "life" when it is most
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effective and capable in economic, ecological, and human terms. AI involves the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system's capacity to heighten positive potential. It mobilizes inquiry through crafting an "unconditional positive question" often involving hundreds or sometimes thousands of people. In AI, intervention gives way to imagination and innovation; instead of negation, criticism, and spiraling diagnosis there is discovery, dream, and design. AI assumes that every living system has untapped, rich, and inspiring accounts of the positive. Link this "positive change core" directly to any change agenda, and changes never thought possible are suddenly and democratically mobilized.
The positive change core is one of the greatest and largely unrecognized resources in change management today. The most important insight we have learned with AI to date is that human systems grow toward what they persistently ask questions about. The single most important action a group can take to liberate the human spirit and consciously construct a better future is make the positive change core the common and explicit property of all.
The Appreciative Inquiry 4-D Cycle
The AI cycle can be as rapid and informal as a conversation with a friend or colleague or as formal as an organization-wide process involving every stakeholder. While there is no formula for Appreciative Inquiry, most organization-change efforts flow through the 4-D Cycle (see figure 1). Each AI process is homegrown—designed to meet the unique challenges of the organization and industry involved.
The Appreciative Inquiry Organization Summit
The AI Summit is among the most exciting Appreciative Inquiry applications. It is a large-scale meeting process that focuses on discovering and developing the organization's positive change core and designing it into strategic business processes such as marketing, customer service, human resource development, and new product development. Participation is diverse by design and includes all the organization's stakeholders. It is generally four days long and involves 50 to 2,000 participants or more. For example, Nutrimental Foods of Brazil, a 700-person company, closed for four days while employees and approximately 150 customers, vendors, and community members participated in an AI Strategic Planning Summit. One year later, profits were up 300 percent, and the
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Figure L The Appreciative Inquiry 4-D Cycle
company made the AI Summit an annual event. It was so cost-effective that it became the company's strategic planning mode.6
While each Summit is a unique design, there are some common aspects of successful AI Summits. The four days flow through the AI 4-D Cycle:
Day—Cycle	Focus	Participants...
1—Discovery	Mobilize a systemic or systemwide inquiry into the positive change core	• Engage in appreciative interviews ■ Reflect on interview highlights
2—Dream	Envision the organization's greatest potential for positive influence and impact in the world	• Share dreams collected during the interviews * Create and present dramatic enactments based on the dreams
3—Design	Craft an organization in which the positive change core is boldly alive in all strategies, processes, systems, decisions, and collaborations	• Identify high-impact design elements and create an organization design • Draft provocative propositions (design statements) incorporating the positive change core
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Day—Cycle	Focus	Participants...
4—Destiny	Invite action inspired by the days of discovery, dream, and design	♦ Publicly declare intended actions and ask for support • Self-selected groups plan next steps
Table 1. AI4-D Cycle and the AI Summit
At AI's heart is the appreciative interview. The uniqueness and power of an AI interview stem from its fundamentally affirmative focus. Appreciative interviews uncover what gives life to an organization, department, or community when at its best. Personal and organizational high points, what people value, and what they hope and wish for to enhance their organization's social, economic, and environmental vitality are revealed in these interviews.
Getting Started: An Illustration
Imagine that you have just received the following unsettling phone call:
My name is Rita Smith. I am president of a New York consulting partnership. Our firm specializes in organizational conflict: labor-management issues, gender conflict, issues of diversity. A Fortune 500 corporation contracts with us to help it eliminate sexual harassment, an issue that is deeper and more severe than virtually any corporation realizes. Our firm has specialized in this area for some years, and I'm beginning to ask myself the Hippocratic oath: Are we really helping? Over two years, by every measure—numbers of complaints, lawsuits, sexual harassment training evaluations, word of mouth—the problem has grown. Our post-workshop interviews show that people feel less able to communicate with the opposite gender, they feel more distance and less trust, and the glass ceiling remains. So here is my question: How would you take an Appreciative Inquiry approach to sexual harassment?
This is a tough one. At the core of the AI cycle is Affirmative Topic Choice. It is the most important part of any AI endeavor. We believe the seeds of change are implicit in the very first questions we ask.
If inquiry and change are a simultaneous moment, if the questions we ask set the stage for what we "find," and if what we "discover" (the data) creates the material for conceiving the future, then how shall we proceed with an apprecia-
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tive approach to sexual harassment? Now let's go back to our phone call. Here is an excerpt from the actual response:
David: We have an important question. What is it that you
want to learn about and achieve? Rita:    We want to dramatically cut the incidence of sexual
harassment. We want to solve this huge problem or at
least make a significant dent in it. David: Is that all?
Rita: You mean what do I really want? [There is a long pause, then she blurts out] What we really want is to develop the new-century organization—a model of high-quality cross-gender relationships in the workplace!
David: What if we invited people in pairs to nominate themselves to share their stories of creating and sustaining high-quality cross-gender workplace relationships?
To fast-forward, a small pilot project surpassed everyone's expectations. Hundreds, not dozens, of pairs nominated themselves. That was surprise number one. Then another organization learned of the pilot and conceptualized a truly major effort. The pioneering organization was the Avon Corporation in Mexico. One hundred people were trained in AI interviewing. Over the next several weeks, they completed about 300 interviews. At each interview's end, the interviewers asked the person if he or she could help interview, creating a waterfall. Stories poured in—stories of achievement, trust building, authentic joint leadership, practices of effective conflict management, ways of dealing with sex stereotypes, stages of development, and methods of career advancement—all focused on high-quality cross-gender work relationships.
A large-group forum was held, using the interview stories to imagine the future. Practical propositions were created such as "Every task force or committee at Avon, whenever possible, is co-chaired by a cross-gender pairing." Some 30 visionary propositions were created. Subsequent changes in system structures and behaviors were dramatic.7 From our perspective, perhaps most important were changes in the cross-gender membership of the senior leadership group. The changes did more than improve interpersonal relations; the glass ceiling became a doorway As with GTE, the story gets better. Avon Mexico received the 1997 Catalyst Award for best place in the country for women to work.
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the methods: adaptable
Roles, Responsibilities,and Relationships
The role of an organization's leadership is that of Positive Change Catalyst—to plant the AI seed and to let it grow in its own way, in its own time. Leaders are invited to participate equally as one of the many essential voices at the table. Given the opportunity to listen to and hear the creative ideas, hopes, and dreams of their colleagues and organization stakeholders, leaders recognize that their greatest job is to get out of the way. Once the positive revolution begins, what it needs most is affirmation and a clear pathway for experimentation and innovation. AI is a high-participation process that once begun continues in remarkable ways, with remarkable results.
The consultants' role in AI is that of Agent of Inquiry} It includes four aspects:
* to view organizations as living spiritual-social systems, mysteries of creation to be nurtured and affirmed, not as mechanistic or scientific operations with problems to be solved;
* to work in the affirmative, continually seeking to discover what gives life to the organization and its members;
' to be facilitators of possibilities, hope, and inspired action;
* to continually seek ways to give the process away, to support organization members in making it their own.
The primary role of Appreciative Inquiry participants is that of Student of Organization Life, AI engages all levels and stakeholders in a cooperative learning and co-creation process. To be a Student of Organization Life emphasizes curiosity and learning in the most pragmatic ways possible. The best of what has been and what is possible can be linked to inspired action. Future dreams are grounded in reality and hence believable.
Stewardship of an organization-wide Appreciative Inquiry generally rests with a Core Team selected for diverse backgrounds, functional experience, and organizational responsibility. The Core Team oversees the process, monitoring its overall impact.
	Before	During	After
Consultants	■ Introduce AI to the organization • Focus on the "business case" for AI	• Train groups in AI ■ Support the Core Team ■ Facilitate the Summit	* Assist the organization to integrate AI into daily practices
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	Before	During	After
Sponsors	* Become knowledgeable in AI • Plant the AI seed	■ Champion AI in the organization • Participate—as an equal, essential voice	• Ask, How might we take an AI approach to this? • Lead by affirmation
Core Team	• Become knowledgeable in AI	• Select affirmative topics * Create interview protocol * Determine interview strategy • Communicate "best" stories	• Use AI as a daily practice
Interviewers	• Become knowledgeable in AI	• Conduct interviews * Summarize "best" stories	• Use AI as a daily practice
Summit Participants	• Conduct interviews or be interviewed • Review interview report	• Engage in discovery and dialogue • Dare to dream • Design the ideal organization	• Sustain AI organizational processes and practices • Create new systems and structures using AI • Share success stories
Table 2. AI Roles and Responsibilities
Appreciative Inquiry and Power in Organizations
We could have called this section "Eulogy for Problem Solving." In our view the problem-solving paradigm, while once perhaps quite effective, is out of sync with the realities of today's virtual worlds.9 Problem-solving approaches to change are painfully slow (always asking people to look backward to yesterday's causes). They rarely result in new vision (a problem, implicitly, assumes an ideal, so we are not searching for new knowledge but are searching for how to close gaps). Finally, problem approaches generate defensiveness and separation among people (it is not my problem but yours).
Our real concern is with power, control, and ways in which the problem-solving paradigm limits human potential. In particular, our concern is with more consciously linking the use of language to human potential and change. Words do create worlds—even in unintended ways.
It was an unforgettable moment in a conference on AI for inner city change agents, mostly community mobilizers from the Saul Alinsky school of thought (Rules for Radicals). After two days a participant challenged:
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This is naive . .. have you ever worked in the depths of the inner city, like the Cabrini Green public housing projects? You're asking me to "appreciate" it... just yesterday the impoverished children were playing soccer, not with a ball—no money for that—but with a dead rat. Tell me about appreciative inquiry in the housing projects!
A powerful question. It made us go deeper. First we argued that problem-diagnosis approaches, including Alinsky's confrontation methods, work, but at half AFs speed. As we explored the cultural consequences of deficit language (e.g., he's "manic-depressive"; she's "antisocial"), we saw a disconcerting relationship between the societywide escalation of deficit-based change methods and the erosion of people power. From a constructionist perspective, words do not mirror the world out there; they coordinate our actions. Professional languages function like tools. When I gave my son a hammer, inevitably everything became a nail. What happens when the "scientific" human-deficit vocabularies become everyone's tool kit? In particular, scholars have documented that deficit-based change approaches reinforce hierarchy, erode community, and instill a sense of self-enfecblemcnt.10
Back at the inner city conference, after tracing human-deficit vocabularies to the mental health professions, the rise of bureaucracy, skeptical science, original sin, and the cynical media, the Alinsky-trained activist gasped:
In the name of entertainment my people are fed negative views of human violence—surrounded by endless descriptions of their "problem lives." The result? People asleep in front of their TVs, unable to move. They have a voice in the housing project assessments. But it is a .. . visionless voice. They get to confirm the deficit analysis. ... What hits me now is how radical the AI message is. Marx could have said it better: human deficit vocabularies are the opiates of the masses. People have voice but are not mobilized by it anymore. Visionless voice is worse than no voice.
It is not problem-solving methodologies per se that are of concern, but that we have taken the tools a step further. Somewhere this shift happened: it is not that organizations ftflveproblems, but that they areproblems (see figure 2). Once accepted as fundamental truth, change management becomes infused with a deficit consciousness. For example, "Action-research is both an approach to problem solving, a model or paradigm, and a problem-solving process."11
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Problem Solving Appreciative Inquiry
"Felt Need" Identification of Problem Appreciating and Valuing the Best of "What Is"
Analysis of Causes Envisioning "What Might Be"
Action Planning (Treatment) Dialoguing "What Should Be"
Baste Assumption: An Organization Is a Problem       Basic Assumption: An Organization Is a Mystery to Be Solved to Be Embraced
Figure 2. Problem Solving and Appreciative Inquiry
Tough questions remain about the power and deficit discourse. Our hypothesis is that when AI is conducted as a whole-systems approach moving through the 4-D Cycle, the positive core becomes the explicit and common property of all. In every case there is movement toward greater equality and less hierarchy. Inevitably, post-bureaucratic organization designs that distribute power and liberate human energy emerge.
Conditions for Success
Appreciative Inquiry best serves when there is a high level of process integrity, where the means and the ends are the same. If an organization wants greater cooperation across functional lines, greater employee commitment and responsibility, and faster cycle time, the process must engage people in interviews across functional lines, involve employees in making decisions and determining the process, and do it faster than usual.
Human change integrity also contributes to Al's success. This is the capacity for system members to be, in Gandhi's words, "the change they want to see." AI impacts personal, relational, and organizational performance profoundly and simultaneously. As individuals are interviewed, they experience unfamiliar validation and support. Telling their stories and being witnessed by other people
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:4
is an exceptionally transforming experience. At the relational level, the interview taps a human longing to experience and recognize meaningful connections. Once discovered, the stories, the shared experience, and the connections become part of the individuals' and the organization s identities. With AI, the organization, its members, and stakeholders transform simultaneously in relation to one another.
Perseverance in change is another success criterion. Change is life itself, not an event. At its best, AI leaves greater organizational capacity to change through inquiry, sharing stories, relationship-enhancing communication, and cooperative innovation. We do not leave organizations in a final state called effectiveness or excellence. We persist in being open to learning, discovering new possibilities for understanding and performance, and sharing our best with others to raise the collective standard of living within our organizations and on the planet.
Creating narrative-rich communication ensures a fertile field for success. In contrast to memos, plans, and policies, Appreciative Inquiry works into the organization's communication through storytelling, testimonials, and large-group forums. AI taps into the organization's inner dialogue—the stories that members tell about themselves and their organization. In effect, sharing best practices, magic moments, and life-giving experiences is how organizing occurs. Through narrative-rich communication, best practices are disseminated and enhance enthusiasm and the sense of well-being. When appreciative stories "have wings" and fly around, the capacity for change and high performance expands.
Inquiry and dialogue create rich anticipatory images. AI is based on the principle that our future images guide our present performance. Where the images are hopeful and expansive, organization performance and personal motivation are generally high. Where the images are depressed or deficient, morale tends to be low and turnover high. By fostering the discovery and sharing of success stories—past and imagined—AI invites affirmation and expansion.
Theoretical Basis
q-y AI accelerates organization breakthroughs. Changes never thought possible are
suddenly and democratically mobilized when people constructively adopt the power of the positive core and simply let go of negative accounts.
But then the question is always voiced, "What do we do with the real problems?"
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Basic Appreciative Inquiry Principles
To address this question in anything other than Pollyannaish terms we need to comment on the work that inspired AI. Five principles central to Al's theory base are discussed below:
The Constructionist Principle: Human knowledge and organizational destiny are interwoven. To be effective, we must understand organizations as living, human constructions.
We are constantly involved in working to understand the world around us—doing strategic planning, environmental scans, audits, surveys, and so on. Constructionism replaces the individual with the relationship as the locus of knowledge by valuing the power of language to create our sense of reality.
Inquiry is inseparable from action. Its purpose is to create "generative theory." Rather than explaining yesterday's world, it articulates tomorrow's possibilities.
The Principle of Simultaneity: Inquiry and change are not separate moments but are simultaneous. Inquiry is intervention. The seeds of change—what people think and talk about, what people discover and learn, and what informs dialogue and inspires images of the future—are implicit in the first questions we ask. They set the stage for what we "find." What we "discover" (the data) becomes the stories out of which the future is conceived. Therefore, one of the most impactful actions a change agent takes is articulating questions.
One great myth is that first we analyze, and then we decide on change. Not so, says the constructionist view. Even the most innocent question evokes change—even if reactions are simply changes in awareness, dialogue, feelings of boredom, or laughter. When we consider that inquiry and change are a simultaneous moment, it is no longer, Is my question leading to right or wrong answers? but rather, How does my question impact our lives together? Is it generating conversations about the good, the better, the possible?
The Poetic Principle: Human organizations are like open books. An organization's story is constantly being coauthored. Pasts, presents, and futures are endless sources of learning, inspiration, and interpretation—like the endless interpretive possibilities in a good poem. The implication is that we can study any topic related to human experience. We can inquire into the nature of alienation or joy, enthusiasm or low morale, efficiency or excess, in any human organization.
Constructionism reminds us that the "world out there" doesn't dictate our inquiries; rather, the topics are products of social processes (cultural habits, rhetoric, power relations). AI makes sure we are not just reproducing the same
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worlds over and over again through simple and boring repetition of our questions (not one more morale survey). AI also says, with excitement, that there are great gains in linking the means and ends of inquiry. For example, in talks with great leaders in nongovernmental organizations (Save the Children, World Vision) we have begun to appreciate the profound joy that CEOs feel as "servant leaders." This positive orientation plays a profound role in creating healthy organizations. Does this mean that joy has something to do with good leadership? Why aren't we including this topic in our change efforts? What might happen if we did?
The Anticipatory Principle: Our positive images of the future lead our positive actions—this is the increasingly energizing basis and presupposition of Appreciative Inquiry.
The infinite human resource we have for generating constructive organizational change is our collective imagination and discourse about the future. The image of the future guides any organization's current behavior. Much like a movie projector to a screen, human systems are forever projecting expectations ahead of themselves. The talk in hallways, the metaphors and language, bring the future powerfully into the present as a mobilizing agent. Inquiring in ways that redefine anticipatory reality12—creating positive images together—may be the most important aspect of any inquiry.
In studies of positive imagery from athletics, research into relationships between optimism and health, placebo studies in medicine, and studies of the Pygmalion dynamic in the classroom, the conclusions are converging on something Aristotle said long ago: "A vivid imagination compels the whole body to obey it."
The Positive Principle: Our experience is that building and sustaining momentum for change requires large amounts of positive outlook and social bonding—things like hope, excitement, inspiration, caring, camaraderie, sense of urgent purpose, and sheer joy in creating something meaningful together. We find that the more positive the question we ask, the more long-lasting and successful the change effort.
Sustaining the Results
Results generated through Appreciative Inquiry are immediate, often surprisingly dramatic and broad in scope, touching personal as well as whole-system transformation and enhancing organization performance, productivity, and profitability.
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The key to sustaining high participation, enthusiasm and morale, inspired action, and organizational agility and innovation lies in an organization-wide commitment to becoming an Appreciative Inquiry Organization (AIO). Sus-tainability depends on consciously and strategically reconstructing the organization's core processes—human resources, management, planning, and measurement—in alignment with the AI principles and methodologies.
As AI's principles and methodologies become embedded in daily practices, the organizational capacity to sustain high levels of participation and enthusiasm increases. For example, at one AIO, all meetings begin with a brief inquiry into "magic moments"—times of extraordinary success among members. Other organizational enactments of AI include annual strategic planning summits, appreciative interviewing as an employee-orientation process, appreciative feedback, and affirmatively focused measurement systems.
Conclusion
To be sure, Appreciative Inquiry begins an adventure.
We are infants in understanding appreciative processes of knowing and social construction. Yet we are increasingly clear that the world is ready to leap beyond deficit-based change methodologies and enter a life-centric domain. Organizations, says AI theory, are centers of human relatedness, first and foremost, and relationships thrive where there is an appreciative eye—when people see the best in one another, when they share their dreams and ultimate concerns in affirming ways, and when they are connected in full voice to create not just new worlds but better worlds. The velocity and largely informal spread of the appreciative learnings suggests a growing disenchantment with exhausted change theories, especially those wedded to human-deficit vocabularies, and a corresponding urge to work with people, groups, and organizations in more constructive, positive, life-affirming, even spiritual ways. AI, we hope it is being said, is more than a simple 4-D Cycle of discovery, dream, design, and destiny; what is being introduced is something deeper at the core.
Perhaps our inquiry must become the positive revolution we want to see in the world. Albert Einstein's words clearly compel: "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
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About the Authors
David Cooperrider, Ph.D., is chairman of the SIGMA Program for Global Change and associate professor of organizational behavior at Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management. He is past president of the National Academy of Management—the Division of Organization Development—and cofounder of the Taos Institute. He has taught at Stanford University, Katholieke University in Belgium, Benedictine University, Pepperdine University, and others. Dr. Cooperrider has served as researcher and consultant to a wide variety of organizations including GTE, Motorola, BP America, Touche Ross, Seattle Group Health Cooperative, Imagine Chicago, and United Way of America. He currently serves as the principal investigator of a multLmillion dollar grant, working with 57 organizations in more than 100 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America. Most of the projects, dealing with global issues of human health, environment, peace, and economic development, are inspired by the Appreciative Inquiry methodologies for which David is best known.
Diana Whitney, Ph.D., is an international consultant, writer, and speaker whose work focuses on high-participation, cooperative processes for social and organization change. She works with individuals, teams, and large-scale systems to facilitate strategic transformation. She is president of the Corporation for Positive Change, a consulting company founded with David Cooperrider to apply Appreciative Inquiry to the global business agenda. Specific areas of inquiry and consultation include strategic planning, vision and values, culture change, leadership development, organization design, the strength of diversity, and merger, alliance, and partnership building. Among her clients are GTE, Hunter Douglas, the United Religions Initiative, SmithKline Beecham, New York Power Authority, Sandia National Laboratories, Johnson & Johnson, Philadelphia Electric Company, Motorola/Teledesic, and the Vermont state government. She teaches Appreciative Inquiry and consults in the United States, Europe, and Asia. She is a cofounder of the Taos Institute, a social constructionist forum for inquiry and dialogue about global leadership and change.
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12. Cooperrider, D. L. "Positive Image Positive Action: The Affirmative Basis of Organizing." In Appreciative Management and Leadership, Rev, ed„ edited by S. Srivastva and D. L. Cooperrider, pp. 91-125. Cleveland, Ohio: Williams Publishing Co., 1999.