A History of Appreciative Inquiry

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The history of Appreciative Inquiry is the history of a major shift in the practice of organization development and transformation. In fact, it is also the history of an unplanned, even unintended, process with no particular intent at all to use it for changing organizations or other human systems. At its inception, the idea that someday Appreciative Inquiry would become a major approach to change in human systems, with associated processes, methods, and theories, was far from the conscious minds of its two most central “parents,” David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva of Case Western Reserve University.

But Appreciative Inquiry did, of course, evolve. It developed from a theory-building process used primarily by academics to an organization change process that enables organizations to build their own generative theory as an integral part of a new approach for enabling transformational shifts.

Since 1980, David Cooperrider and others, experimenting with Appreciative Inquiry in organizational settings, discovered that AI is a powerfully effective way to enable organizations to learn about their systems in ways that result in transformative change, often literally at the speed of imagination. Exhibit 2.1 outlines some of the key developments in the evolution of AI.

Exhibit 2.1. A Brief History of the Development of Appreciative Inquiry

Date Event
1980 Cleveland Clinic Project is initiated. As a young doctoral student, David Cooperrider, is asked to do an organizational analysis of “What’s wrong with the human side of the organization?” In gathering his data, he becomes overwhelmed by the level of cooperation, innovation, and general social effectiveness he sees in the organization. Having been influenced by earlier writings by Schweitzer and Rader, he obtains permission from the clinic’s board of directors to focus totally on an analysis of the factors contributing to the highly effective functioning of the clinic. The Cleveland Clinic become the first large site where a conscious decision to use an inquiry focusing on life-giving factors forms the basis for an organizational analysis.
1982 Ken Gergen publishes Toward Transformation of Social Knowledge, a powerful critique of conventional scientific meta-theory, pointing to a whole new way of thinking about theory. He calls this new method “generative theory,” described by Cooperrider as “anticipatory theory that has the capacity to challenge the guiding assumptions of the culture, to raise fundamental questions regarding contemporary life, to foster reconsideration of that which is taken for granted, and thereby furnish new alternatives for social action.” (AI listserv, 1999)
1984 NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Science holds international conference in Tampa, Florida, with a focus on applied behavioral science. John Carter makes a presentation on Appreciative Inquiry for OD practitioners.
1984 Cooperrider makes the first public presentation of his still evolving ideas about AI to the Academy of Management where, he reports, his ideas are treated with snickering and derision.
1986 Cooperrider completes his doctoral dissertation “Appreciative Inquiry: Toward a Methodology for Understanding and Enhancing Organizational Innovation” at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. What began as a study of the development of generative theory had evolved into a strategy for organization change.
1986 Suresh Srivastva and Cooperrider publish “The Emergence of the Egalitarian Organization,” a case history of work at the Cleveland Clinic (from 1980 to 1985) that started out as an organizational diagnosis of pathologies and problems, and became instead the first major large-scale AI project.
1987 Cooperrider and Srivastva publish “Appreciative Inquiry in Organizational Life.” This marks the first time that the term Appreciative Inquiry appears in a professional publication. The article is noteworthy not only because it makes public the term Appreciative Inquiry but because it represents the beginning of the transition from thinking of AI as just a theory-building approach to seeing its potential as a full-blown intervention framework.
1987 The first public workshop on AI, promoted by two MBA students, is held in San Francisco with David Cooperrider as the key presenter.
1987 The Roundtable Project at a Canadian accounting firm (with John Carter as the external lead) becomes the first large-scale change effort in which AI is conceived of as a comprehensive intervention framework from data gathering to implementation. After four years of collaboratively searching for the right organization-wide intervention, John Carter offers his client Appreciative Inquiry as a possible framework for change. Within less than three months and without any coaching from Carter, the client selects AI as the way to ensure the future of the firm. Over a one-year period, Carter and his client system plan and implement a twelve-step process that starts with the establishment of a philosophically congruent project structure, incorporates the systematic design of a customized AI protocol, and includes widespread interviews followed by the development of provocative propositions (PPs), followed in turn by widespread consensual validation of the PPs and an organic, rather than mechanistic, implementation process. A major innovation in the use of AI—having members of the organization interview each other—was piloted by Carter and has become a major part of AI methods for organization intervention. Note, however, that although this project was highly collaborative, the data analysis (the meaning making) was still in the hands of the external consultants.
1988 The Appreciative Research Carnival, an innovation that resulted from Tojo Joseph Thatchenkery’s dissertation research, marked the first incidence in which clients took over the “meaning making” (analysis) with the data. As part of his dissertation research at Case, Thatchenkery begins a major three-year AI-based data gathering process with the Institute for Cultural Affairs (ICA) in the United States. Much to his surprise, members of the client system wrest from his control the data analysis and the process of developing future plans based on the data. Thatchenkery calls the process, which had been initially designed to gather data to build more grounded theory, “The Appreciative Research Carnival.” The following year Thatchenkery experienced the same phenomenon again. ICA inadvertently becomes the most “fully blown” collaborative use of Appreciative Inquiry for organizational change to date.
1989 SIGMA Center for Global Change is founded by The Weatherhead School of Management at Case as a center for research and education dedicated to the study and development of worldwide organizations and leaders capable of addressing the most complex and pressing global issues of our time. Committed to the premise that there are no limits to cooperation, the center mandate asserts that virtually every item on the global agenda for change can be dealt with given the appropriate forms of effective management and organization. SIGMA focuses its attention on innovative organizations that are pioneers in building a healthy and vibrant world future. Highlighted are organizations from across sectors (public, private, non-profit, cross-sector partnerships) that take a lead role in advancing positive global change. Issues of focus include (1) intelligent environmental policy and practice, (2) people-centered approaches to sustainable economic development, (3) the growth and support of local and global civil society, and (4) the emergence of a global ethic or set of higher values that inspire human action in service of the widest possible good.
1989 Social Innovations in Global Management Conference, held at Case Western in November of 1989 highlighted studies of five global social change organizations, one of which was ICA. Articles from these studies, along with papers on the subject of social innovations in management in the global arena were subsequently published in Research in Organizational Change and Development (Vol. 5; Pasmore & Woodman, 1989) from JAI Press Inc. This marked the first major activity of SIGMA and laid the groundwork for what in 1990 developed into a role for SIGMA in the Global Excellence in Management initiative for management of international development agencies.
1990 Srivastva, Fry, and Cooperrider publish Appreciative Management and Leadership: The Power of Positive Thought and Action in Organizations. This book contains Cooperrider’s much quoted research on the power of the positive image, an article entitled “Positive Image; Positive Action.”
1990 The Organizational Excellence Program (OEP), a pilot project to create ways for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to offer innovative management and leadership training to U.S. Private Voluntary Organizations (PVOs), was founded under the leadership of Ada Jo Mann. Case Western Reserve was chosen as the university partner for the pilot because of the work of David Cooperrider and his colleagues with global social change organizations. At the end of the pilot phase, the OEP became the Global Excellence in Management Initiative (GEM) operating under a USAID grant given to SIGMA/Case Western Reserve University. GEM’s goals are to (1) promote organizational excellence in development organizations in the US and abroad; (2) create new forms of global cooperation; and, (3) sustain excellence, develop capacity to continually learn, adjust and innovate over time. AI provides the foundational operating principles. The OEP and the GEM Initiatives have fostered major innovative ways to use AI in the global arena, creating approaches and models that are being used in all organizations today.
1992 Imagine Chicago is created. This is a major community development effort based heavily on AI principles and practice.
1993 NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Science initiates an internal Appreciative Inquiry based diversity project to discover and promulgate the innovative and effective lessons that NTL learned from nearly twenty years of work with organizations on ways to value diversity. Cathy Royal is the lead consultant for the project. In preparation for the year-long diversity study project, Jane Watkins, Cathy Royal, David Cooperrider, and John Carter offer a three-day AI lab for NTL members.
1994 NTL’s Professional Development Workshop in Appreciative Inquiry is offered for the first time, trained by Jane Watkins and Cathy Royal. Subsequently, the team of Watkins, Royal, Bernard Mohr, and Barbara Sloan staff yearly workshops in basic AI and an AI practicum workshop.
1995 Cooperrider is elected president of National Academy of Management (OD Division).
1996 The Organization Development Practitioner publishes an issue devoted completely to AI.
1996 The Thin Book of Appreciative Inquiry is published by Sue Annis Hammond, providing the first widely available, basic introduction to AI as a philosophy and methodology of change.
1997 AI listserv is established by Jack Brittain at University of Texas, Dallas. It serves as a forum for practitioners at all levels to share and learn from each other. (The listserv continues to operate from the University of Utah.)
1998 Lessons from the Field, edited by Sue Hammond and Cathy Royal, is published. It is the first widely available book of case histories of organization development projects done from an appreciative perspective.
1998 The electronic AI Newsletter is established by Anne Radford in London.
1999 Locating the Energy for Change: An Introduction To Appreciative Inquiry, written by Dr. Charles Elliott, Dean of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, is published.
2001 Appreciative Inquiry: Change at the Speed of Imagination, the first edition of this book written by Jane Magruder Watkins and Bernard Mohr for OD practitioners and consultants who want to use AI as the perspective for their work, is published by Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer and becomes, over the following decade, a top seller around the globe. Over the ensuing years, dozens of articles and books have been added to the wide network of resources available on the subjects of AI as theory and AI as a perspective for OD practice.
2001 to 2010 Global Appreciative Inquiry Conferences. During the past decade, four major Appreciative Inquiry conferences have been held around the world, with the 2009 Global Conference held in Katmandu, Nepal, attracting more than four hundred people in person and online from forty-three countries around the globe.
2001 to 2010 The Power of the Positive. Toward the end of the 20th Century, a young research psychologist, Barbara Fredrickson, began studying the impact of positive emotions on human behavior. This seminal work has become a major reference for those who want to understand the power of searching for the generative and positive in human systems. Appreciative Inquiry has the capacity to give people an experience of learning from positive experiences in the past as a way to focus on creating a desirable future. Fredrickson’s work describes the impact that a focus on the positive has on people’s sense of well being.
2001 to 2010 European AI Network. In 2006 countries in Europe began to organize what has now become a widespread network of AI and strength-based change practitioners across the continent. Gatherings take place several times a year with countries volunteering to host meetings. A website (www.Networkplace.eu) created and managed by Leif Josefsson of Norway, is open to people across the globe.
2001 to 2010 Major Events and Activities. Over the past decade AI has spread to every corner of the globe and has impacted every form of human organization—corporations, governments, international groups, schools, churches, and more. AI books and materials exist in nearly every major language on the planet. David Cooperrider created for the United Nations a “Global Compact” meeting among leaders of major global corporations; local community projects such as “Imagine Cleveland” and “Imagine Capetown” are spreading across the globe; AI works well for family interventions and personal growth work; schools at every level are using AI for planning and in the classrooms; in fact, Appreciative Inquiry has been adapted and found to be generative and creative in any and all gatherings of human being. At the Global AI Conference in Nepal, Jane Magruder Watkins was awarded the first “Lifetime Achievement Award” for spreading AI around the globe.
A “Certificate Track” in Appreciative Inquiry was established by the NTL Institute of Applied Behavioral Science and Case Western Reserve University’s School of Organizational Behavior to train people who want to use AI in their workplace and consulting practices.
On “The AI Commons” and other websites around the globe, the history and spread of AI is documented with examples and stories of the myriad of uses and successes that the positive perspective coupled with models and processes in the field of OD have brought to the world.
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