Talk:Appreciative inquiry

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Appreciative Inquiry was co-developed with Suresh Srivastva alongside David Cooperrider at the Weatherhead School of Management. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 155.247.166.32 (talk) 19:05, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

At the moment this page reads like a sales brochure fo AI as a technique. Its undoubtedly an important article but it lacks references, has a series of subjective and value laden phrases without citation. --Snowded (talk) 15:17, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

I've always been a bit skeptical of connection between the ideas of "appreciative systems" from Geoffrey Vickers, and "appreciative inquiry" which is practised by organization development consultants. I'm not saying that "appreciative inquiry" consulting is either good or bad, but just that I can't find the direct linkage to "appreciative systems" cited to Vickers.

In particular, this article points to Vickers (1986), which I believe means Value systems and social process. Taking advantage of search in Google books on the text, the word inquiry only comes up six times. I think that relevant hits are in chapter 7 on "Appreciative Behaviour", but still don't see the phrase "appreciative inquiry". (The chapter is a reprint: "This paper was originally published in Acta Psychologica, vol. XXI, no. 3, 1963."  I have a copy of the book!)

It could be that more scholarship to make the linkage between "appreciative systems" and "appreciative inquiry" explicit. I'm not close enough to this work to make that bridge. Daviding (talk) 19:20, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Huh?
I read this article. I still do not understand what AI is supposed to achieve and how AI people go about it. Should I care? — Solo Owl (talk) 00:31, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
 * the T-groups article seems to claim that "appreciative inquiry" is an extension of "T-groups". Which, from the article, seems to be a small group psychotherapy exercise in which the facilitator emotionally manipulates people into "confessing", talking about things they would rather keep quiet about. The underlying philosophy resembles that of the surveillance state and managing by big data movement - that the key to good management is not so much for the manager to have a deep professional understanding of the subject matter, but rather to have him find out lots of data / info about what is going on as if that would magically help him make intelligent decisions, cluelessness notwithstanding. 76.119.30.87 (talk) 20:30, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Seems OK
I had a course on this recently, although I am no expert. From what little I do know, this is a fairly good (if incomplete) representation of AI. I hope that in the future, someone more knowledgeable can add to it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.175.128.1 (talk) 19:39, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Major revision
I have made some major revisions in-order to try and address the tags at the top of the page. Now I feel that it is much more NPOV and the Wwords used are simple reporting of how AI describes itself. Peacocking has been diminished greatly by addition of sources and deleting many statements, or making them less intense when they were simply hyperbolic. I would like to have the present tags removed but am unsure of the proper procedure. -RSaylors (talk) 01:59, 23 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Much improved -- Snowded TALK  04:46, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Suggestion: Summarize the Central Principles of AI
I read this article while looking for a good summary of the basic tenets of AI. After reading it twice, I still do not know what these are. One structural solution might be to include a section early in the article summarizing AI's fundamental principles (with an appropriate citation of course). Drbb01 (talk) 13:02, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Good idea - I've added a sub-heading to draw attention to the fundamental principles in the manner you suggest. Hypocaustic (talk) 09:40, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Critiques?
Haven't there been any critiques of AI? Anything negative? Without discussions of the negatives (if any) as well as the positives, it still doesn't read with a NPOV. --Fredrik Coulter (talk) 23:34, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

'Interesting point Fredrik. The answer seems to be there have been efforts at scholarly critique, but little in the way of valid negative criticism. When I say valid, I am of course discounting for the time being the mistaken perception that Ai's emphasis upon the positive avoids problem-solving (which is rapidly dispersed once participants understand how the approach works) - although there could be an argument for reflecting this fairly common misperception in the article. There are some academic critical evaluations which you could probably access if you're on an MPA programme (see http://arj.sagepub.com/content/4/4/401.short for instance) - maybe worth exploring. Until then, however, what we have at present is arguably as neutral as can be achieved. Hypocaustic (talk) 09:52, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

There are literally thousands of Management Doctorates and people from U.S. non AACSB accredited Ph.D. programs in management that learn nothing but AI. Entire divisions of the academy of management are off-limits unless you are doing AI work. Further, the lack of critical inquiry in AI makes it a half-witted attempt at sugar-pills for the hypoglycemic company. In the same stroke there are journals and scholars that would decry AI for it's lack of rigor, theory, and efficacy. The problem, though, is that there are basic assumptions made by these critics that disagree with the assumptions of AI. All that is to say, yes there's criticism, but the criticism is about as fair as holding "Barney and Friends" to the same standards as "Schindler's List". As a mindless palliative for the contemplation-free sheep that are management-types it's spot on. But that's just this humble critical researcher's opinion, and has as much place in this article as deep social-commentary does in a the page on the Backyardigans. Saylors (talk) 19:29, 4 April 2013 (UTC)


 * To the IP, please sign your comments. Otherwise I agree with your sentiments but I haven't seen much of AI at the Academy or in other circles unless it all changed in Boston this year.  Its one of those sideways moving techniques from therapy that are not uncommon in management 'science'.  I half remember Boje being critical at one stage but a lot of it is ignored in much of the literature.  I totally disagree with Hypocaustic's view that criticism is dispersed when the technique is understood.  I have to write an entry on narrative for an academic encyclopaedia of action research so I will cover off some of the criticism then but its unlikely to be more than a one liner.  There are more serious issues to address.   Snowded  TALK 07:47, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks dave, done Saylors (talk) 19:29, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Appreciative Inquiry Method (AIM) may be something else
It's hard to determine, as all of Stowell and West's work seems to be hidden in paid-for academic journals or expensive books, but I suspect that 'Appreciative Inquiry Method' (AIM) referred to in the opening paragraph may be something different from Appreciative Inquiry *see below. David Cooperrider is universally acknowledged as the originator of Appreciative Inquiry, from 1980 onwards (sometimes in tandem with his supervisor at the time, Suresh Srivastra). See http://weatherhead.case.edu/faculty/David-Cooperrider/

Placing Stowell and West in such a prominent position in the article misleads the reader as to their importance to the field of Appreciative Inquiry, even if their 'Appreciative Inquiry Method' is the same thing. The Appreciative Inquiry Method is not the same as AI - see below

Incidentally, you can find some critiques of AI pointed to from http://www.gervasebushe.ca/AITC.pdf and http://appreciativeinquiry.case.edu/uploads/Evaluation%20of%20Appreciative%20Inquiry%20Interventions.pdf — Preceding unsigned comment added by Practicaleq (talk • contribs) 16:55, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Frank Stowell (talk) 14:29, 8 November 2014 (UTC)The Appreciative Inquiry Method [AIM] As part of a research project West [West 1991] undertook field research at a major company within the UK and the lessons learnt from this research developed a method of knowledge elicitation. The appeal of the approach was that it enabled the researcher to interact with managers without taking up too much of their time. The ideas were inspired by the work of Vickers, Checkland and Churchman and provided the inquirer with tools that were ‘neutral’ and not predicated to a particular outcome. They called the approach Appreciative Inquiry Method, AIM, in recognition of Vickers exposition of the cycle of appreciation [Stowell and West 1991] that he uses to describe how we make sense of things. Since that time AIM has been used and developed through research projects and workshops out of which have emerged useful lessons that have enriched the ideas without compromising the underpinning soft systems concept of the approach [see Smith, 2001; Champion, 2001; Cooray 2010; Hart, 2013].

As AIM developed it was used in a number of “real world” situations and the lessons learnt have shown it to be to be a useful way of gaining understanding of complex systems beyond what was at first envisaged. It has been found particularly useful where a full study using, for example, Soft Systems Methodology [SSM], has been unnecessary. AIM starts in the form of an agreed question or issue and, with the clients, work from there to gain an Appreciation of the situation of interest. AIM is no longer just a way of eliciting knowledge from an individual expert but now provides the means of a collective of interested parties to participate in expressing their understanding about a situation. The systems tools embedded within AIM can be used by the clients with the minimum of interference from the inquirer or from the method itself. Although AIM is still used in its early incarnation e.g. West, 2015; West and Thomas, 2005] the developed version is increasingly used to make sense of a situation because it provides all participants with a means of taking part in a cycle of learning about the situation of interest and how the “Issue” or “Question” can best be addressed, e.g Hart 2015; Stowell, 2012; Cooray, 2010.

It is important to note that AIM owes its intellectual development to Vickers and Checkland and is not related to Cooperider et al’s AI [1987]. AI is based upon identifying and building upon the positives of organisational life, which they describe as, “… a miracle to be embraced” AI, he says, is at ‘… its basis a metaphysical concern… it is a way of living with, being with, and directly participating in the varieties of or social organisational we are compelled to study” [Cooperroder and Srivastva, 1987, p131]. Like Cooperider we advocate the use of AIM through participation but it is through its framework for thinking, which is designed to enable the participants to ‘give up’ their expertise in an unconstrained way, that the allows the facilitator/investigator to become a benign participant. In AIM the investigator ‘keeps out of the way’ allowing the method to provide the inspiration to help the participants address the issue or question at hand. AIM is an attempt to put into action (operationalise) the means of enabling organisational members to gain an ‘Appreciation" of the functions of "their" situation of interest and their own and others role within it.

References <ref.,ref Champion, D. 2001. Navigating the gap between purposeful activity and a serving information system, PhD thesis, Milton Keynes : De Montfort University. Checkland, P.B. 1999. Systems Thinking, Systems Practice, a Thirty Year Retrospective, Chichester: Wiley Cooray, S. (2010) End User Driven Development of Information Systems: Revisiting Vickers Notion of Appreciation. PhD Thesis, Portsmouth: University of Portsmouth Cooperrider, D. and Srivastva.,`s. [1987] Appreciative Inquiry In Organizational Life, Research in Organizational Change and Development, Vol.1, pages 129-169. Cooperider, D., Whitney, D., and Stravos, J., Appreciative Inquiry Handbook, 2nd Edition (Book & CD), Perfect PaperbackChurchman, C.W. (1971). The Design of Inquiring Systems. New York, Basic Books. Smith, S. (2001)Modelling of Complex Decision Making, Contribution Towards The Development Of A Decision Support Aid. Thesis (unpublished), Paisley: University of Paisley. West, D., (1991) Towards a Subjective Knowledge Elicitation Methodology for the Development of Expert Systems, Thesis (unpublished), University of Portsmouth, 1991 Stowell, F.A. (2014). Organisational Power and the Metaphor Commodity, International Journal of Systems and Society, 1 (1):12-20. Stowell, F.A. (2012) The Appreciative Inquiry Method – A Suitable Framework for Action Research?, Systems Research and Behavioural Science 30(1): 15-30. Stowell.F.A., and West.D., 1991. “The Appreciative Inquiry Method, A Systems Based Method of Knowledge Elicitation,” in Systems Thinking in Europe, M.C. Jackson, G.J. Mansell, R.L Flood, R.B. Blackham and S.V.E. Probert(eds.), New York:Plenum, pp. 493-497. Vickers, G. 1983. The Art of Judgement, London: Harper and Rowe. Vickers, G. (1983) Human Systems are Different, London, Harper and Row. Graham 87 14:03, 7 December 2016 (UTC)