WHAT IS APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY?
Appreciative Inquiry (AI) has been described in many ways. It originated as a theory and qualitative research technique with five core principles: constructionist, simultaneity, poetic, anticipatory, and positive. The five principles move the foundation of AI from theory to practice.
David Cooperrider describes AI as a causative theory applicable to all OD and change methods:
“Appreciative Inquiry grows from the exciting challenge that is implicitly if not explicitly posed by the social constructionist and mentalist paradigms: that to a far greater extent than is normally acknowledged, we human beings create our own realities through symbolic and mental processes and that because of this, conscious evolution ...