{"id":281,"date":"2024-07-12T07:13:57","date_gmt":"2024-07-12T07:13:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/siteit-dev4.nl\/?p=281"},"modified":"2024-07-12T07:41:56","modified_gmt":"2024-07-12T07:41:56","slug":"appreciative-inquiry-is-not-just-about-the-positive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/waarderendegemeenteopbouw.nl\/index.php\/2024\/07\/12\/appreciative-inquiry-is-not-just-about-the-positive\/","title":{"rendered":"Appreciative Inquiry Is Not (Just) About The Positive"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

OD Practitioner, Vol. 39, No. 4, pp.30-35, 2007.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gervase R. Bushe, Ph.D.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Segal Graduate School of Business Simon Fraser University bushe@sfu.ca<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

August 2007<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One thing that concerns me about the current excitement and interest in appreciative inquiry (AI) is that many of the consultants and managers I talk to who claim to be doing AI don\u2019t seem to understand the importance of generativity<\/em>, as an input and an outcome, of AI. Many people seem to get blinded by the \u201cpositive stuff\u201d. After years of focusing on problems and deficits and dysfunction they get entranced with \u201cfocusing on the positive\u201d and equate this with AI, but I don\u2019t think that is the core of appreciative inquiry. Instead, the core of AI is generativity <\/em>(Cooperrider & Srivastva, 1987). One of the central sources that influenced the creation of AI was Kenneth Gergen\u2019s (1978) paper \u201cToward Generative Theory\u201d where he argued that the most important thing social science can do is give us new ways to think about social structures and institutions that lead to new options for action. AI can be generative in a number of ways. It is the quest for new ideas, images, theories and models that liberate our collective aspirations, alter the social construction of reality and, in the process, make available decisions and actions that weren\u2019t available or didn\u2019t occur to us before. When successful, AI generates spontaneous, unsupervised, individual, group and organizational action toward a better future. My research suggests that when AI is transformational it has both these qualities: it leads to new ideas, and it leads people to choose new actions (Bushe, in press; Bushe & Kassam, 2005). Maybe we should start calling it Generative Inquiry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are many considerations, beside a focus on the positive, that go into crafting an effective appreciative inquiry. In this article I want to explore what \u201cthe positive\u201d is reallyabout and what is required for an appreciative inquiry to be generative and therefore, transformational – something quite different from the image that has been perpetuated of AI as action research with a positive question. First, I\u2019ll give an example of what I mean by transformational change and contrast that with another AI intervention that was a dismal failure, making the point that simply getting people to tell their \u201cbest of\u201d stories may not accomplish much. Then I\u2019ll look at what a focus on the positive can do for AI: 1) it can support generative thinking, 2) it can support the change process, and 3) it can make \u201cplanned\u201d culture change possible. Next I\u2019ll describe some things I\u2019ve learned help make AI generative: 1) generative questions, 2) generative conversations and 3) generative actions. I\u2019ll conclude by pointing out that many of the same consulting issues and contingencies that effect traditional OD effect Appreciative Inquiry too. AI does not magically overcome poor sponsorship, poor communications, insensitive facilitation or un-addressed organizational politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lees of download hier het volledige artikel:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n