- Paperback: 288 pages
- Publisher: Jossey Bass (12 Mar 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 078795179X
- ISBN-13: 978-0787951795
- Product Dimensions: 23 x 17.8 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 339,195 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
Appreciative Inquiry: Change at the Speed of Imagination
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Product Description
Review
"This is a book about the future of organization development. It is a practical guide to Appreciative Inquiry for organization leaders and organization development professionals and it is a comprehensive explanation at the speed of imagination." ––Peter Sorenson, professor and director of the Ph.D. program in organization development and master of science program in management and organization behavior, Benedictine University
"This book is a gift to organization development practitioners. It takes us forward both professionally and personally. It challenges us to shift our perspectives, and deepens our understanding of organizations as organic systems. The book provides practical guidance––and encouragement––to creating sustainable change in large complex systems. Jane Watkins and Bernard Mohr are generous in sharing their wisdom and experience. In doing so they place on us tremendous responsibility for the fate of change efforts through our choice of approach to inquiry."––Cynthia Haddock, senior change advisor, The World Bank Group
"This book is a gift to organization development practitioners. It takes us forward both professionally and personally. It challenges us to shift our perspectives, and deepens our understanding of organizations as organic systems. The book provides practical guidance––and encouragement––to creating sustainable change in large complex systems. Jane Watkins and Bernard Mohr are generous in sharing their wisdom and experience. In doing so they place on us tremendous responsibility for the fate of change efforts through our choice of approach to inquiry."––Cynthia Haddock, senior change advisor, The World Bank Group
Review
"This is a book about the future of organization development. It is a practical guide to Appreciative Inquiry for organization leaders and organization development professionals and it is a comprehensive explanation at the speed of imagination." --Peter Sorenson, professor and director of the Ph.D. program in organization development and master of science program in management and organization behavior, Benedictine University
"This book is a gift to organization development practitioners. It takes us forward both professionally and personally. It challenges us to shift our perspectives, and deepens our understanding of organizations as organic systems. The book provides practical guidance--and encouragement--to creating sustainable change in large complex systems. Jane Watkins and Bernard Mohr are generous in sharing their wisdom and experience. In doing so they place on us tremendous responsibility for the fate of change efforts through our choice of approach to inquiry."--Cynthia Haddock, senior change advisor, The World Bank Group
"This book is a gift to organization development practitioners. It takes us forward both professionally and personally. It challenges us to shift our perspectives, and deepens our understanding of organizations as organic systems. The book provides practical guidance--and encouragement--to creating sustainable change in large complex systems. Jane Watkins and Bernard Mohr are generous in sharing their wisdom and experience. In doing so they place on us tremendous responsibility for the fate of change efforts through our choice of approach to inquiry."--Cynthia Haddock, senior change advisor, The World Bank Group
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First Sentence
"AS WE ENTER THE 21st CENTURY, there has been a fundamental shift in how we see and experience the world." Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
"AS WE ENTER THE 21st CENTURY, there has been a fundamental shift in how we see and experience the world." Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
39 of 39 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a fundamentally different approach to problem solving and change management which is gaining worldwide popularity rapidly. While the traditional approach focuses on analysing problems and then fixing what is wrong, AI does just the opposite: it searches for and amplyfies solutions that already exist (in this it is highly comparable to solution focused brief therapy). Quite a lot of good books have been written on AI. The thing I like most about this book by Watkins and Mohr is how practical it is. The authors generously packed it with very useble examples and tools. This makes it very recommendable for AI practitioners.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
7 reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Appreciative Inquiry an Orientation Toward Life and Work
9 Oct 2001
Format:Paperback
Appreciative Inquiry is a way of seeing and being in the world. ... Appreciative Inquiry applied, whether as a planning process or an evaluative process, becomes empowering and life-affirming in any human system. (page 191) The key to sustaining the momentum is to build an "appreciative eye" into all the organization's systems, procedures, and ways of working. (page 152) AI is not simply a tool ... it is a total way of being/working.
As an organization consultant I am interested in three things when learning about and considering adopting an approach or methodology: what are it's theoretical basis, fundamental assumptions and beliefs, basic process, and application to different types of organizational situations. Watkins and Mohr have written a book that offers all three. The opening two chapters ground Appreciative Inquiry in the history of the OD theory and method and clearly explain the core principles and generic processes of AI. The subsequent chapters each focus on one of the five generic processes plus evaluation. Each chapter explains one process in detail, illustrating it with two case examples. The combination of grounded theory and practice facilitates understanding, imagining, and applying. The examples are drawn from different consultants, types of organizations, and focuses of interventions, all of which support a rich understanding of the potential of this approach.
My one wish is that chapter 8, "Finding Innovative Ways to Create the Preferred Future" be expanded. I wanted to read more about an appreciative approach to the Destiny Phase, the most complex part of any change process.
Watkins and Mohr are generous with their knowledge and experience, offering the experienced practitioner enough to begin working from an AI perspective.
This book plus the more academic, Appreciative Inquiry: Rethinking Human Organization Toward a Positive Theory of Change, edited by David L. Cooperrider, Jr. Sorensen Peter F., Diana Whitney, and Therese F.Yaeger, are an excellent package for understanding Appreciative Inquiry: how it developed, its current practice, and directions for future development.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
A Practictioner's Guide
17 April 2001
Format:Paperback
From my experience in the field, I believe this to be the first comprehensive guide to the application of appreciative inquiry. If you are interested in approaching change in your organization or community, leaving the old deficit-based models behind, then this book will be very useful to you. It contains case studies and practical instructions along with a history of the development of the approach and its underlying theories. It's only drawback is that I wish it was a little more descriptive in some of its application guidance, but this keeps it more focused.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
A Concrete Guide to an Abstract Concept
1 May 2001
Format:Paperback
As the first book in a series describing lead-edge concepts and approaches to change for human resource practitioners, it has set the standard. This book provides a much needed guide to understanding the theory as well as the practice of Appreciative Inquiry (AI). The authors are both seasoned practitioners who teach and actively use the approach in their consulting work. They present several frameworks and walk through each step of a typical engagement giving samples of meeting agendas, conversation scripts, and questionnaire designs. While there is no one standard approach to using AI, the authors have shared the core principles that enable the competent professional to modify and adapt the approach to fit his/her circumstance. They, also, include numerous case studies with contact names and details of those conducting the work to enable follow-up by those interested. The one weakness I found was the discussion of chaos theory and its link to AI. Having done some reading on the subject, I found the treatment of the topic a little brief and the connection with AI unclear. In addition, I really wanted the references grouped by topic, i.e. social constructionism so that I could pursue the various topics more in-depth. Yet, despite these two minor points, I feel they have made a major contribution in meeting the "challenge of making this thinking accessible to many without either trivializing it or overcomplicating it."
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