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The Introduction of Appreciative Inquiry to the U.S. Navy Using Appreciative Inquiry Interviews and the Large Group Intervention with Applications to U.S. Marine Corps Logistics Strategic Management
Abstract
This thesis documents the introduction of the Appreciative Inquiry (AI) within the U.S. Navy and discusses applications of the Appreciative Inquiry based Large Group Intervention (AI-LGI) within Marine Corps Logistics strategic planning, implementation, and organizational change. It is a follow on from David Nystrom's thesis '360-Degree Feedback, Leadership, Leadership Development, Performance Appraisal'. Unlike traditional top down and bottom up strategies that seek to identify and analyze problems in systems. AI evaluates what gives life to organizations at their best moments by using the power of positive questioning. When combined with a Large Group Intervention, AI is a powerful tool to affect rapid organizational change. This thesis introduces AI, discusses its history, and describes the history of change efforts within the Navy. The thesis documents events leading up to and including the 'Leadership Summit', to include introduction of AI within the U.S. Navy and qualitative analysis of stories that address issues of leadership. It discusses Financial Management implications of implementing this process and describes using AI-LGIs within the strategic management process as a tool for facilitating rapid and collaborative organizational change within Marine Corps Logistics.
... Several agencies larger than our own have successfully utilized Ai to bring about important radical change; namely, GTE/Verizon (Whitney, Cooperrider, Garrison, & Moore 1996), the United States Postal Service (Head, 2002), and the United States Navy (Tripp & Zipsie, 2002). ...
Problem-solving is embedded deeply in the digital DNA of GIS. Most projects involving GIS 1.0 and 2.0 raise community weaknesses, failures and other problems and use them to motivate change. The projects often create a future that does not differ greatly from the past or last long. Although looking into community problems is important and sometimes necessary, the steps of problem-solving do not always leave people feeling happy. To inspire communities to create change based on their strengths and achievements, and to provide better participant experience, this article develops the concept of a new form of GIS called Appreciative GIS (AGIS). AGIS are grounded in the affirmative premise that every community, however challenged, is gifted with certain assets, potentials and strengths which, when effectively exploited, can take that community to a better and sustainable future. Based on Earth's internal structure, the article develops a useful layered community model where crust, mantle and core strata represent the community's body, life-draining and life-giving elements in that order. The model helps explain the different views of the community from current GIS and AGIS perspectives. A Total GIS (TGIS) cube is also developed and used to indicate that current GIS commonly focus on elements of the mantle or what we do not have, what we cannot do and what makes us weak. AGIS, on the other hand, dig up the core and cultivate what we have, what we can possibly do and what makes us strong. In a significant departure from the linear approach of problem-solving, the article suggests implementing AGIS through a 7G cyclical method. The article contends that although AGIS may not be the whole enchilada, they can serve as a beacon of hope and a powerful source of inspiration especially for individuals and groups who are perceived or made to perceive themselves as dysfunctional, weak or poor.
This paper develops the construct of organizational hope as a methodological imperative for studying and strengthening organizations. It calls on organizational scholars and practitioners to move beyond the critical impulse by advancing "textured vocabularies of hope" that affirm the best and most promising dimensions of social and organizational life and provide a moral image of the future to guide collective action. This can be accomplished by defining hopeful research agendas and choosing methods of inquiry that explore and illuminate the hopes and aspirations of a broad range of organizational members. After clarifying the concept of textured vocabularies of hope, this paper undertakes a thorough analysis of hope by tracing the construct throughout the Western intellectual tradition, highlighting four of hope's enduring qualities, and offering a set of propositions that extends the implications of organizational hope to our task as scholars and practitioners.