Inquiring into Appreciative Inquiry: A Conversation With David Cooperrider and Ronald Fry

Abstract

David Cooperrider and Ronald Fry are professors of Organizational Behavior at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University. CWRU’s Department of Organizational Behavior is consistently acknowledged as one of the best in the world by the Financial Times. Together with their mentor, Suresh Srivastva, they created Appreciative Inquiry over 30 years ago. Since then, Appreciative Inquiry has been extensively applied world-wide, and many exciting results have been achieved and published. This paper is grounded in an in-depth conversation with David and Ron at the World Appreciative Inquiry Conference 2012, and subsequent discussions between 2012 and 2016. It focuses on how Appreciative Inquiry has been contributing to a generative scholarship and what new possibilities are on the horizon to strengthen these efforts. In the epilogue we highlight contributions to current debates around generative scholarship, and offer recommendations to heighten the generative potential of Appreciative Inquiry and our field.