Appreciative Inquiry Is Not (Just) About the Positive
Author: Gervase R. Bushe
OD Practitioner
Date: 01/01/2007
Volume: 39
Issue: 4
Pages: 30-35
One thing that concerns me about the current excitement and interest in Appreciative Inquiry is that many of the consultants and managers I talk to who claim to be doing AI don't seem to understand the importance of generativity, as an input and an outcome, of AI. Many people seem to get blinded by the "positive stuff". After years of focusing on problems and deficits and dysfunction they get entranced with "focusing on the positive" and equate this with AI, but i don't think that is the core of Appreciative Inquiry. This article explores what the "positive" is really about 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.
Online Resources:
Gervase Bushe website
Resource Files:
Article (pdf )
|
|
