Evaluation of appreciative inquiry theory: Through competences description analysis as a skill to measure desirable leadership performance

EFFECTIVE EXECUTIVE  NOV.2009

ORGANIZATIONAL LOYALTY

Evaluation of appreciative inquiry theory: Through competences description analysis as a skill to measure desirable leadership performance

-- Dr. Enrique Reig, Dr. Ceferí Soler

This article describes the 4Ds model for getting an evaluative form for appreciative inquiry system, and explains in a competences format each dimension of appreciative inquiry with the purpose to measure a positive leadership performance through follower's evaluation. Finally conclusions are drawn and areas of future research recommended.

Human existence can neither be wordless nor be nourished with falsehoods. It is only through truthful words that men can sustain and transform the world.

José María Arrizmendiarrieta.
Founder of the Mondragón cooperative,
which currently has over 40,000 owners.

Value-based Management (VBM), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Appreciative Inquiry (AI), as they currently stand have proven themselves unequal to the task of making companies pull their weight in fostering positive social changes. In many cases, this is because of methodological and theoretical shortcomings. However, the lack of consistency and effectiveness in many VBM, AI and CSR efforts basically stem from owners, managers and staff members' lack of ethical awareness.

Life has various dimensions of purpose/ meaning: utilitarian or material; intrinsic or emotional well-being; and transcendental-ethical, contributing to the lives of others. The three strands are closely interwoven. The emotional and transcendental-ethical strands form part of the most spiritual and strategic aspect of life ("Man shall not live by bread alone". Mathew 4, 4")

Strategic objectives

• Appreciative Inquiry makes the theory of change embedded in positive inquiry explicit in the affirmative basis of organizing. The model of Appreciative Inquiry is one of the more significant innovations in action research in the past decade.

• To deepen and increase the consistency of current approaches to CSR and VBM

• To make another world possible by making another kind of company possible

• To foster synergy between companies' financial results and their ethical and emotional outcomes

• Facilitate the quest for the real meaning of life.

Evolution in models of company management

• The individual conscience and awareness of business leaders has evolved towards "post-conventional" propositions and is less influenced by the predominant beliefs and ideas of leaders' peer groups. This paradigm shift enables such individuals to lead in a genuinely transformational fashion.

• The potential of people should be furthered and they should be considered as ends in themselves rather than as mere "resources" to be exploited by companies.

• Capitalism must shed its wild and destructive traits and come to terms with today's pressing need for sustainable development. The final objective is to achieve a sensible model of Capitalism that helps forge a better world.

• There is a need to manage increasing complexity. Instructions, objectives, and even declared values (VBM – García & Dolan) are insufficient for this purpose. A new wisdom and freedom based on conscience and greater awareness is needed.

• Organization design theory identifies coordination as a fundamental relation and challenge for results. When works processes are highly interdependent, any action taken by one participant requires a response by one of the others participants.

• Relationship management needs to shift from minimalist approach to the activist approach to relationship management. Effective supervision is both time consuming and relationship intensive. Roles cannot be clarified, mutual agreement concerning the responsibilities of a subordinate's job cannot be reached without a good deal of positive discussion. A network perspective offers Positive Organizational Development.

• Finding Positive Meaning in work. Work means benefits, costs and results for individuals, groups and organizational effects. Work is simply a means to a financial reward that allows people to enjoy their time away from the work until the work means increased pay, prestige, status, promotion and advancement, self- esteem, increased power and higher social standing. In Appreciative Inquiry, the work is an end in itself, and is usually associated with the belief that the work contributes to the greater good and makes the world a better place.

Organizational Practices that Foster Meaningfulness

These practices often indoctrinate members into a particular set of values, beliefs which often change how members relate to each other and to non-members (O´Reilly; Trice;1989). Individuals have a need to belong, to be part of a community such as work. Blurring the boundaries between work and non work life, communities allow members to invest and express more of who they are while at work, thus facilitating a sense of holism. "Fostering Meaningfulness in working and at work". Pratt, M; Asforth, B; O'Reilly; Trice, H; 1989 "Finally, those with calling orientation work not for financial rewards or for advancement, but for the fulfilment that doing the work brings". p300 Wrzesniewski /Finding Positive Meaning at Work/Positive Organizational Scholarship. Foundations of a new Discipline. /Cameron K; Dutton J; Quinn R; by including more of the individual in the organization, creating deeper interpersonal bonds, and thus make one's membership more meaningful in one's life. Unfortunately, in many organizations having alienating work environments and managers, the employees tend to view such initiatives with scepticism or cynicism.

Empowerment and Cascading Vitality

We argue that sharing power for some employees who understand that their supervisors enhance their agency by sharing their power will imitate this behavior. Some employees will not understand the power sharing dynamics; others will not choose to expand their power. Still others will have understood the dynamic long before it is modelled by their supervisors. The special claim here is that when people are shown how to share power and given permission to do so, some percentage of them will find the opportunity attractive and will act on it.

Appreciative Inquiry Model

Appreciative inquiry is about the co-evolutionary search for the best in people, their organizations, and the relevant world around them.

In its broadest focus, it involves systematic discovery of what gives "life" to a living system when it is most alive, most effective, and most constructively capable in economic, ecological, and human terms. AI model involves, in a central way, the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system's capacity to apprehend, anticipate, and heighten positive potential. It centrally involves the mobilization of inquiry through the crafting of the "unconditional positive question" often involving hundreds or sometimes thousands of people. In AI the arduous task of intervention gives way to the speed of imagination and innovation; instead of negation, criticism, and spiraling diagnosis, there is discovery, dream, and design. AI seeks, fundamentally, to build a constructive union between a whole people and the massive entirety of what people talk about as past and present capacities: achievements, assets, unexplored potentials, innovations, strengths, elevated thoughts, opportunities, benchmarks, high point moments, lived values, traditions, strategic competencies, stories, expressions Since Cooperrider & Srivastva's (1987) original article on appreciative inquiry there has been a lot of excitement and experimentation with this new form of action research. The technology of appreciative inquiry as a social research method and as an organization development (OD) intervention are evolving differently. Here we will mainly focus on it as an OD intervention. Currently there is no universally accepted method for doing an appreciative inquiry and it is premature to offer a "recipe" for how to do it. There is, however, a fairly well accepted set of parameters for distinguishing between what is and is not a legitimate appreciative inquiry. In this paper we will describe the basics of this technique and report on some innovations and colleagues have experimented with to extend the appreciative approach. First, however, an introduction to the theory behind the technique.

What is Appreciative Inquiry?

Appreciative inquiry (Cooperrider & Srivastva, 1987), a theory of organizing and method for changing social systems, is one of the more significant innovations in action research in the past decade. Those who created action research in the 1950s were concerned with creating a research method that would lead to practical results as well as the development of new social theory. It was hoped that action research would be an important tool in social change. A key emphasis of action researchers has been on involving their "subjects" as co-researchers. Action research was and still is a cornerstone of organization development practice. While always controversial as a scientific method of inquiry, action research has recently come under criticism as a method of organizational change and as a process for developing new theory. In their seminal paper Cooperrider & Srivastva criticize the lack of useful theory generated by traditional action research studies and contend that both the method of action research and implicit theory of social organization are to blame. The problem is that most action research projects use logical positivistic assumptions (Sussman & Evered, 1978), which treats social and psychological reality as something fundamentally stable, enduring, and "out there".

Appreciative inquiry, however, is a product of the socio-rationalist paradigm (Gergen, 1982, 1990) which treats social and psychological reality as a product of the moment, open to continuous reconstruction. Cooperrider and Srivastva argue that there is nothing inherently real about any particular social form, no transcultural, everlasting, valid principles of social organization to be uncovered.

While logical positivism assumes that social phenomena are sufficiently enduring, stable and replicable to allow for generalizations, socio-rationalism contends that social order is fundamentally unstable. Socio-rationalists argue that the theories we hold, our beliefs about social systems, have a powerful effect on the nature of social "reality". Not only do we see what we believe, but the very act of believing it creates it. From this point of view, the creation of new and evocative theories of groups, organizations, and societies, are a powerful way to aid in their change and development. Like most post-modernists, Cooperrider & Srivastva argue that logical positivistic assumptions trap us in a rearview world and methods based on these assumptions tend to (re)create the social realities they purport to be studying. Further, they argue that action researchers tend to assume that their purpose is to solve a problem.

Social phenomena are guided by cognitive heuristics, limited only by the human imagination: the social order is a subject matter capable of infinite variation through the linkage of ideas and action. (Cooperrider and Srivastva, 1987, p.139).

Groups and organizations are treated not only as if they have problems, but as if they are problems to be "solved". Cooperrider and Srivastva contend that this "problem-oriented" view of organizing and inquiry reduces the possibility of generating new theory, and new images of social reality, that might help us transcend current social forms. What if, instead of seeing organizations as problems to be solved, we saw them as miracles to be appreciated? How would our methods of inquiry and our theories of organizing be different?

Appreciative inquiry "...refers to both a search for knowledge and a theory of intentional collective action which are designed to help evolve the normative vision and will of a group, organization, or society as a whole." (Cooperrider & Srivastva, 1987, p.159) Cooperrider makes the theory of change embedded in appreciative inquiry explicit in a later paper on the affirmative basis of organizing (Cooperrider, 1990). In this paper Cooperrider proffers the "heliotropic hypothesis"– that social forms evolve toward the "light"; that is, toward images that are affirming and life giving. In essence his argument is that all groups, organizations, communities or societies have images of themselves that underlay self-organizing processes and that social systems have a natural tendency to evolve toward the most positive images held by their members.

Conscious evolution of positive imagery, therefore, is a viable option for changing the social system as a whole. The individual conscience and awareness of business leaders has evolved towards "post-conventional" propositions and is less influenced by the predominant beliefs and ideas of leaders' peer groups. This paradigm shift enables such individuals to lead in a genuinely transformational fashion.

Consciousness is the source of all creation and precedes the expression of values, determination of objectives, and the establishment of norms or instructions. Consciousness is a creative force in the Universe, giving us soul and filling our minds with spiritual vitality.

The combination of consciousness and conscience – Conscientia – is what makes us human beings, enabling us not only to think, feel and act but also to observe, evaluate and modulate what we have thought, felt, and done.

Conscientia (Latin): Shared science. The word root of conscience and consciousness

Consciousness: being aware, self-awareness in relation to one's setting.

Conscience: Human ability to make ethical evaluations and choices (in both a limited and a general sense).

Consciousness is hampered or dulled by an overload of irrelevant information (internal and external noise), by the sheer pace of change, and by past and future fears. What fosters this dulling of self-awareness? How is it caused?

Conscience can be developed from the most childish level (based on external threats and rewards) to more mature ones (internally created and based upon freedom and personal responsibility in seeking the meaning of life).

Being aware ("conscious") means … perceive, feel, realize, know oneself, become aware, understand, reflect, evaluate, respond, shoulder responsibility.

As a change process appreciative inquiry is a powerful "pull" strategy and can sometimes transform a relationship or a group.

Nowadays complexity is evolving between human interactions. Sensible and sustainable capitalism make people switch from machine to resources, people will be considered as an ending. Fuente. Salvador Garcia- 1997 to 2007.

Taking all of these together as a gestalt, AI deliberately, in everything it does, seeks to work from accounts of this "positive change core" – and it assumes that every living system has many untapped and rich and inspiring accounts of the positive. Link the energy of this core directly to any change agenda and changes never thought possible are suddenly and democratically mobilized.

What is desirable leadership? Desirable leadership happens when leaders achieve the goal to influence followers and also when this influence is positive; in other words, when the influence of leaders on followers is appropriate, useful and good for them, and one of the tools for making it possible is appreciative inquiry technique.

When one person selects negative inquiry to build relations with others, it necessarily will provoke negative findings, then those people will react to those negative conclusions with disappointment and anger. After these reactions the person will be apprehensive of other procedures and probably will develop an anxiety disorder. When the same person selects negative inquiry to do business with the world, the possible results of these practices are in the side of commerce and good, profitable business but on the human side could lead to insensibility, instability, a tendency to create social distance, self compliance and lack of fraternity.

Select the negative part of reality for inquiry has consequences. We learn to perceive others as dangerous, and we develop a strong rationality which allows us to think in this way, then we can prepare defensive actions against the people wrongly and negatively perceived. Some of those actions include negative tools such as: lies, resentment, tendency to take undue advantages and finally the collapse of partnership.

Very different is when people select to build relations and businesses on appreciative inquiry.

Is it necessary to measure appreciative inquiry in leadership?

Let's turn and see around the world. How is the business environment doing? Are the leaders performing good or wrong management? Are they justifying their negative actions? Are they learning from their mistakes?

By remaining silent, today's corporate leaders are worsening the regretful experience left by corporate governance failures. The missing ingredients are "champions" of business committed in building organizations with enduring value and values. We are looking for Positive Organizations.

In some sense we can say: Thank you ENRON and A andersen, The depth of your misconduct so shocked the world that it awakened us to the reality that the business world was on the wrong path, worshipping the wrong idols and headed for self-destruction. What was missing? Undoubtedly leadership was not congruent and authentic. The moral is simple: we can learn from our mistakes; otherwise, we should not be surprised if mistakes are repeated over and over again.

Appreciative inquiry leadership

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a process based on the positive question that helps people to imagine possibilities, looking at the range of alternatives and possibly applying these alternatives to fundamental aspects of each organization. Skinner, S and Kelley, S (2006) mixed the technique of appreciative inquiry with the sales.

AI process should begin with the appreciation of what the system is and possesses, that is to say, it should value and appreciate the organization. The researcher's first task is discovering describing and explaining what are the factors that make a particular end possible, motivating and committing the individual or the members of the organization in its perception of value of this positive nucleus as well.

Johnson and Leavitt (2001) comment that using AI, the organizations can discover, understand and learn about their success experiences. The positive vision is the image of the future that emerges from positive examples based on the positive past of the organization. Cooperrider and Whitney (2002)

Watkins and Mohr (2001) suggest that when starting an AI process adopting a positive attitude, citing anecdotes and positive histories, identifying the topics that arise from the histories and anecdotes narrated by the employees, will create shared vision of the future that allow to detect innovative forms of building the future.

When most employees concentrate on the problem and make a geniune effort to discover what works in the organization, creating images of the sought state, they will be able to hold up the vertiginous rhythm of change (Watkins and Mohr 2001).