| Aiming Higher With Appreciative
Inquiry: Building on our Collaboration
With the United Nations Global Compact
In June of 2004 Appreciative Inquiry was chosen as the methodology for
a Leaders Summit at the United Nations. It involved CEOs from companies
like BP, Daimler-Chrysler, Goldman Sachs, Hewlett Packard, Starbucks,
and Volvo as well as civil society and UN leaders. It was an important
meeting in the life of the UN Global Compact which is perhaps the larges
global corporate citizenship network in the world. UN Secretary General
Kofi Annan gave a commendation to the team from Case Western Reserve
University’s Weatherhead School of Management, particularly for
the methodology of Appreciative Inquiry. On June 21, 2004 Kofi Annan
wrote:
“I would like to commend you more particularly for your methodology
of Appreciative Inquiry and to thank you for introducing it to
the United Nations. Without this, it would have been very difficult,
perhaps even impossible, to constructively engage so many leaders
of business, civil society, and government.”
At that time there were about 1,400 organizational members of the
Global Compact. Today that number is close to 2, 500 and that growth,
we believe, signals an important inflection point in the worldwide
emergence of new conceptions of corporate citizenship, sustainable
enterprise, and what might be called more proactively the idea of “business
as an agent of world benefit.”
Building on that 2004 Leaders Summit, we have again connected with
the UN Global Compact, and proposed an additional partner, the Academy
of Management, to join forces for a next phase global forum titled:
Business as an Agent of World Benefit:
Management Knowledge Leading Positive Change
October 23rd-25th 2006
The Forum includes a threefold call to:
- Unite the strengths of business with the universally recognized
values of the UN Global Compact and the world’s Millennium
Development Goals, which include the eradication of extreme
poverty, restoring the environment, and building partnerships for
peace and development;
- Directly challenge “the great trade-off illusion” and
to explore fresh research on the business case for sustainable development
as essential to contemporary corporate strategy and societal well-being;
and
- Re-envision management education as a major world player in transformational
learning—to envision management education extending
its immense influence to advance global corporate citizenship
by transforming intellectual frameworks and attitudes, and thus
the contributions of millions of future leaders.
This is the first time in history that the Academy of Management
has partnered with the United Nations Global Compact. The Academy
of Management is the leading professional association for scholars
dedicated to creating and disseminating knowledge about management
and organizations. Members are scholars at colleges, universities,
and research institutions, as well as practitioners with scholarly
interests from business, government, and non-governmental organizations
(NGOs). Founded in 1936, the Academy of Management is the
oldest and largest scholarly management association in the world. Today,
the Academy is the professional home of more than 16,000 members
from 91 countries.
Hosted at Case Western Reserve University, the Forum is emerging
as an unprecedented opportunity to bring together leading business
executives, management scholars, civil society leaders, government
policy makers, and top students from around the world to identify
and to leverage new solutions that have the potential to change
the nature of 21st-century society. The format, like the content,
of the Forum will encircle the globe, with delegates coming from
around the world to attend the Forum in person and an additional
3,000 delegates expected to participate virtually. Speakers at the
Forum will include such leaders as the author of The Fortune
at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits, CK
Prahalad, Harvard’s Jane Nelson, who is conducting groundbreaking
work on business initiatives for peace, thought leader Warren Bennis,
someone who seems always to be ahead of his time, and the Academy
of Management’s President, Tom Cummings, whose foresight has
allowed the Forum to become a reality. UN Secretary General
Kofi Annan has been invited to serve as Honorary Chair of the event.
The aspirations for the Forum are not meager. The Forum presentations,
panels, papers, dialogues, and debates are organized around three
themes: (1) the state of the world and the economic possibilities
of our time; (2) the business case for understanding business as
an agent of world benefit—how business performance can profit
from current and future advances in global corporate citizenship;
and (3) management education as the leader in facilitating the transformational
learning needed for 21st-century success—including opportunities
that Canadian designer, Bruce Mau, recognizes as “massive
change” and learnings that the Club of Rome labels as “anticipatory” and “transformational.” Could
it be—with the right mix of innovation and entrepreneurship—thatthe
creation of sustainable value could become the business
opportunity of the 21st century? Are we actually beginning to recognize
the next phase of responsible business and global corporate citizenship—and
beyond? Can we anticipate a tipping point in business practice,
as well as in management education and research that will redefine
the very nature of business’s approach to earning profits
and to positively influencing society for the benefit of all humanity?
Attached you will find the complete
overview of the global forum. It’s all about advances in what Marty Seligman and the positive
psychology movement would call “positive institutions”---helping
to advance the science of human strengths. I encourage everyone
in the AI community to read the overview and to consider participating
in the forum’s pre-work and calls for papers, workshops and
stories of innovation; likewise please feel free to download and
email the overview to people, organizations, and other communities
interested in the arena of positive change and the forum’s
aims.
It will be exciting.
David L. Cooperrider |
Commentaries
Decade of Determination:
Building an Economic Engine Empowering a Green City on a Blue Lake Through "AI"
September, 2009
Going Green Maximum Velocity through AI's Sustainable
Design Factory
March, 2008
Aiming Higher with Appreciative Inquiry: Building
on our Collaboration with the United Nations Global Compact
February, 2006
David Cooperrider's Foreword to Appreciative
Intelligence: Seeing the Mighty Oak in the Acorn
November, 2005
High Hope in the Himalayas: A 2005 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee and Her Work With Appreciative Inquiry
September, 2005
The United Nations Global Compact Leaders Summit
February, 2005
"Blessed is this peacemaker"
January, 2005
New Publications on AI: Forewards by David Cooperrider
February, 2004
Business as an Agent of World Benefit - Replay video
October, 2003
Peter Drucker's Advice for Us on the New AI Project: Business as an Agent of World Benefit
March, 2003
The Birth of the AI Commons
October, 2001 |
