The role of language in constructing social realities. The Appreciative Inquiry and the reconstruction of organisational ideology

Abstract

The article explores the ways in which language is a factor in the generation of social realities. Having as a foundation social constructionism, the appreciative inquiry is a form of intervention in the organisational environment that can produce a rapid change in the way an organisation's members define the organisation they work in. Thus, the theory of social constructionism seems to be operational in the organisational space, as it focuses on the relations through which social actors construct realities. The approach of social constructionism starts from the assumption that the language people use in order to understand the world is a social artefact, the historical product of exchanges between people. During the meetings with representatives of governmental and nongovernmental organisations involved in the experiment, we recorded the adjectives and the metaphors they used in order to describe the organisational environment they worked in. The experiment proves the fact that the negative definitions given to the organisations in which the participants were operating could be transformed into positive or neutral definitions through an appreciative approach. As a rule, people use negative terms in order to describe the organisations they work in; however, an appreciative intervention can cause a rapid change in their language, which generates in its turn new organisational realities. The results obtained during research provide the opportunity to rethink the organisational environment through the filter of ideologies negotiated and constructed through dialogue and to use an appreciative approach in order to change them.

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Revista de cercetare [i interven]ie social\
Review of research and social intervention
ISSN: 1583-3410 (print), ISSN: 1584-5397 (electronic)
Selected by coverage in Social Sciences Citation Index, ISI databases
The role of language in constructing social realities.
The Appreciative Inquiry and the reconstruction
of organisational ideology
Stefan COJOCARU, Constantin BRAGARU, Oana Maria CIUCHI
Revista de cercetare [i interven]ie social\, 2012, vol. 36, pp. 31-43
The online version of this article can be found at:
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Lumen Publishing House
On behalf of:
„Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University,
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REVISTA DE CERCETARE SI INTERVENTIE SOCIALA
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Working together
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31
The role of language in constructing social
realities. The Appreciative Inquiry and the
reconstruction of organisational ideology
Stefan COJOCARU1, Constantin BRAGARU2, Oana Maria CIUCHI3
Abstract
The article explores the ways in which language is a factor in the generation of
social realities. Having as a foundation social constructionism, the appreciative
inquiry is a form of intervention in the organisational environment that can
produce a rapid change in the way an organisation’s members define the orga-
nisation they work in. Thus, the theory of social constructionism seems to be
operational in the organisational space, as it focuses on the relations through
which social actors construct realities. The approach of social constructionism
starts from the assumption that the language people use in order to understand the
world is a social artefact, the historical product of exchanges between people.
During the meetings with representatives of governmental and nongovernmental
organisations involved in the experiment, we recorded the adjectives and the
metaphors they used in order to describe the organisational environment they
worked in. The experiment proves the fact that the negative definitions given to
the organisations in which the participants were operating could be transformed
into positive or neutral definitions through an appreciative approach. As a rule,
people use negative terms in order to describe the organisations they work in;
however, an appreciative intervention can cause a rapid change in their language,
which generates in its turn new organisational realities. The results obtained
during research provide the opportunity to rethink the organisational environment
through the filter of ideologies negotiated and constructed through dialogue and
to use an appreciative approach in order to change them.
1 PhD, Associate Professor, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Department of Sociology and Social
Work, Iasi, Bd. Carol I no. 11, ROMANIA; Tel. 0040.744788779; E-mail: contact @
stefancojocaru.ro.
2 PhD, Lecturer, Nicolae Titulescu University, Bucharest, Department of Business Administration
and Marketing, Faculty of Economics, ROMANIA; Tel: +40-758-776213; E-mail:
costin_bragaru@yahoo.com
3 Ministry of Education, Research, Youth and Sports, Counsellor, Str. General Berthelot, nr. 28-30,
sectorul 1, Bucuresti, ROMANIA. PhD Lecturer, Petre Andrei University from Iasi. Phone:
0040.723483724, email:oanapsih@yahoo.com
Working together
www.rcis.ro

32
REVISTA DE CERCETARE SI INTERVENTIE SOCIALA - VOLUME 36/2012
Keywords: constructionism; language; Appreciative Inquiry; ideology; appre-
ciative intervention; realities.
Introduction
Constructionism is a new orientation in sociology, based mainly on Gergen’s
works (1985; 1994; 1999) and it designates diverse approaches ale of the way
reality can be known and especially how realities can be constructed. There are
multiple definitions of social constructionism, due to its very nature, due to the
recognition of the multiple realities generated by the diverse interactions between
the individuals who construct these realities.
There are multiple definitions of social constructionism, due to its very nature,
due to the recognition of the multiple realities generated by the diverse interactions
between the individuals who construct these realities. By its very nature, con-
structionism cannot generate a unitary definition, due to the fact that knowledge
is socially constructed. This paper does not aim to treat exhaustively the defi-
nitions given to social constructionism, but rather to highlight its essential features
and the manner in which they can be used in organisation development, com-
munity development, in constructing the ideologies that structure people’s percep-
tions within governmental and nongovernmental organisations. This approach
considers that reality cannot be known in itself and asserts the existence of multiple
realities constructed in the interactions between individuals (Cojocaru & Cojocaru,
2011). The inquiry of social constructionism is focused mainly on explaining the
processes through which people describe, explain or interpret the world they live
in (including themselves)” (Gergen, 1985: 266). Social constructionism is inte-
rested in the communication and relations between people and in the process of
producing meaning in social interactions. A point of departure is represented by
the fact that people, in the same circumstances, are capable of producing very
different social constructions of the same reality. Some of the most significant
features we shall deal with in this paper:
a) Language, communication and discourse are considered means of in-
teraction between individuals who construct multiple realities. Social con-
structionism considers that realities are created by people who communicate
through language, each of them influencing and limiting the responses of
the other. In this approach, the attention is not focused on the individual,
but instead on the network of interactions between individuals. This ap-
proach is a strategy for analysing the ways realities are created within
organisations as a result of interactions between individuals and of the
significations they assign to these realities. Campbell, Coldicott and Kin-
sella (1994) place constructionism in the area of organisational problem-

33
solving, considering that it concerns the process through which people
construct an image about the problems of the organisation and the process
through which we construct or co-construct together with them a new
history, which includes the solutions to the problem (Campbell, Coldicott
and Kinsella, 1994: 18). This means that human organisations represent the
various ways in which people define them through explanations, personal
understandings brought into the sphere of negotiation with the others.
b) Social constructionism focuses on the relations through which social
actors construct realities. The approach of social constructionism starts
from the assumption that the language people use in order to understand the
world is a social artefact, the historical product of exchanges between
people (Gergen, 1985: 267).
c) This type of approach considers that the subject-object distinction is not
productive and generative enough, maintaining a dualism which considers
that the subject and the object are independent one from another. “Social
constructionism abandons the illusion of the ontological fissure between
subject and object and replaces it with an intersubjective reality. Social
constructionism believes in the idea that reality is considered an interactive
process because people give meaning to their own experiences through
constant interaction with the environment” (Van der Haar, 2002: 26). Co-
operrider and associates (1995) believe that postmodernism is returning to
social theory by the fact that the constructionist theory goes beyond “all the
assumptions of the type subject/object, observer/object separation, words
seen as instruments, the rigor of discovering immutable models and laws...”
(Cooperrider and associates, 1995: 161).
d) Knowledge and social reality are dependent on the social relations and
on the negotiation processes between people. In recent years, the sociology
of knowledge has refined the approach of social constructionism in order to
show that all knowledge of reality is more of a human creation than a
mirror of the independent reality (Cojocaru & Sandu, 2011). Social con-
structionism considers that when we start observing or talking about what
is, we, in fact, are constructing a social reality (Van der Haar, 2002: 24).
The constructionist perspective states that we can never know what is uni-
versally true or false, what is good or bad, right or wrong, instead we only know
stories about truth, falsehood, good, evil, right or wrong, and it abandons the
constructivist idea according to which the mind if the individual represents a
mirror of reality. Constructionism focuses on relations and upholds the role of the
individual in constructing significant realities. “The map is identical with the
territory” seems to be the essence of the constructionist vision, the map being
considered as an interpretation of reality being permanently constructed in the
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REVISTA DE CERCETARE SI INTERVENTIE SOCIALA - VOLUME 36/2012
interaction with the others. Thus, maps are permanently constructed and re-
constructed through the interactions with the other individuals’ maps, through a
process of continuous negotiation. Reality itself is a result of these negotiations
and interactions and “we are capable of making multiple and diverse maps of
reality” (Maas et al., 2001: 373). Social constructionism is not interested in
developing a perfect map of reality, but rather in capturing the processes through
which the maps are constructed and negotiated between individuals by harmo-
nising individual maps, because this construction process is the most important:
“the attention must be directed towards the multiplicity of the ways the world can
be constructed” (Gergen, 1994: 82). Dynamic maps are constantly constructed
and reconstructed, having several social motors, filtered through the individual’s
perspective: interest, purposes and means, values, habits and knowledge. They
are also useful in interpreting social realities viewed as social constructs of the
individual in interaction with his environment, and at the same time as an in-
dividual’s responses to the conditioning, constraints, and limitations generated by
the others’ interpretations and meanings.
Using appreciative inquiry in order to change the organisational
environment
Appreciative Inquiry can be an alternative intervention aiming to change the
way people construct the reality in which they live, act, communicate and react,
without keeping in the foreground the problems they face. Other authors have
seen the appreciative inquiry as an instrument that can be used to direct change in
an organisation or in a community (Burke, 2011; Cuyvers, 2010; Lustig & Rin-
gland, 2010). From its introduction, the Appreciative Inquiry has been applied in
numerous domains beyond the area of organisational development: healthcare
(Hirunwat, 2011; Rubin, Kerrell, & Roberts, 2011), evaluation (Cojocaru, 2008;
Messerschmidt, 2008; Ojha, 2010; Kavanagh et al., 2010), therapy (Sandu &
Ciuchi, 2010; Donaldson & Ko, 2010; Rubin, Kerrell & Roberts, 2011; Galazka,
2011; Wendt, Tuckey & Prosser, 2011), education (Kumar & Chacko, 2010; Kelly,
2010; Cojocaru, D., 2011), research methodology (Cojocaru, 2005a; Kluger &
Nir, 2010; Van Gramberg, 2010; Cowling & Repede, 2010), human resources
development (Cooperrider & Srivatsva, 1987; Cooperrider & Srivatsva, 1994;
Cooperrider & Whitney, 2000; Rattanaphan, 2010; Bushe, 2010; Arpinte et al,
2010). The appreciative approach entails a type of interactive planning (Cojocaru,
2005b) that stops offering solutions to the identified problems and focuses instead
on changing the system that generates these problems. The appreciative vision is
provocative and it is not the result of a single mind, but a collective construction
based on negotiation and consensus (Powley et al, 2004). From this point of view,
Elliott considers that through the approach of the appreciative inquiry it is possible

35
to achieve “the minimisation of the asymmetry of power and the increase of the
level of involvement in the change process... by direct, one-on-one commu-
nication” (Elliott, 1999: 22). This idea produces modifications concerning the
management process, even a reversal of the “organisational pyramid” (Cojocaru,
2010). Some authors (Gergen, 1985; Cooperrider & Srivastva, 1987; ------ Whit-
ney, 1998; Elliott, 1999; Bushe, 2001; Van Der Haar, 2002; Bushe, 2010) consider
that language and words are social artefacts and not only a mirror of reality.
Words represent “a convention people establish in order to understand each other
(Vad Der Haar, 2002: 25) and these conventions construct the social reality. An
organisation is constructed through the interactions people establish (Somerville
& Howard, 2010) and it reflects the multiple ways in which they interpret the past
and the present (through memory) and design the future (through imagination);
situations are perceived through “stories” about various events, phenomena,
incidents etc. or through the metaphors expressed. The interpretations become,
unconsciously, a motor of social actions and of the permanent construction and
reconstruction of reality. The people’s discourse about their organisation reflects
the meanings they give to the events, for example, a simple metaphor expresses
the way the organisation is structured, how it operates, how it meets the needs of
its members or of its clients: “Discourse concerns a set of meanings, metaphors,
representations, images, stories, appreciations etc. that, together, produce parti-
cular versions of the events” (Burr, 1995: 62). In the constructionist approach, the
analysis of texts, conversations and organisations are undertakings that capture
the ways people construct realities and present them as such. In order to reach a
shared interpretation, most organisations construct internally, through dialogue
and consensus, a mission, represented by a metaphor directing the objectives and
the entire activity of its members. The organisations that do not manage to
construct a mission cannot reach a shared interpretation of a desired future. In
some nongovernmental organisations we studied we found an effective practice:
even though the organisation’s mission has been established many years before,
each year the members of the organisation take part in the reconstruction of the
mission. Even if it stays the same, the meetings for reconstructing the mission
have the role of reliving positive experiences and of re-affirming, collectively, a
shared image of the future. The constructionist principle used in the application
of the appreciative inquiry (Cooperrider and Whitney 2000: 3-27) takes into
account the fact that every organisation is a result of human creation, more
precisely of the collective interaction between individuals and of the permanent
reconstruction generated by our knowledge, beliefs and ideas. The organisation is
a manifestation of the interactions between our mental models regarding it, which
are constructed socially through a relational process. The organisation is not an
objective reality, independent of its members’ individual interpretations. From
this perspective, the organisation is itself a reality generated by multiple inter-
pretations (Murrell, 2001: 92), and organisational change through appreciative
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inquiry means, in fact, changing these interpretations and constructing a shared,
collective and coherent image.
The researcher using the appreciative inquiry in order to introduce change in
the organisation must focus on the following aspects (Bushe, 1995:16):
a) To appreciatively discover the organisation, by looking for the best
examples of success found in the past of its members and to motivate them
to identify these examples. The appreciative discovery of successful expe-
riences, interpreted as successes by the organisation members, is oriented
by the research topic; for example: the motivation of organisation members,
identifying the needs of the members and adapting the services offered in
the organisation to those needs, leadership etc.
b) To appreciatively understand the organisation, by approaching it in depth
and by understanding the organisational contexts that have resulted in
success in the past.
c) To help the organisation members to appreciatively amplify the discovered
experiences and to boost these experiences by encouraging their repetition.
From the perspective of social constructionism, which forms the basis of
appreciative inquiry, we “see what we believe” (Bushe, 2001: 24), and the theory
that explains certain phenomena is a representation of our belief. This helps us
understand how an organisation or community can be changed by redefining the
way people describe events. The appreciative inquiry uses these ideas, putting in
the foreground appreciation as a necessary and appropriate force for organi-
sational change. It introduces the criterion of appreciative statements as a source
of orientation for the organisation, according to the heliotropic principle, seen as
a paradigm generated by analogy: “the same way plants orient themselves in the
direction of the source giving them life and energy” (Elliott, 1999: 43), orga-
nisations orient themselves depending on what ensures their development. In this
type of research, the use of the poetic principle (Cooperrider and Whitney, 2000:
3-27) refers to the fact that any organisation is the result of the multiple inter-
pretations given by people, expressed through language, which, in its turn, has a
formative character, being a part of the constructed world. Language is not just an
image of the world, but a genuine form of social action. Ideas, representations,
images, histories, stories, metaphors, generate events, depending on their emo-
tional charge and on the way they are interpreted. The metaphors describing
organisations are ways of social action for structuring these organisations. In the
meetings with the two experimental groups used in order to prove the influence of
interpretations given by organisation members to the way the organisation ope-
rates, the participants were asked to write down a metaphor about the organisation
they belonged to; the metaphor was then analysed in order to obtain a picture of
the way the members of an organisation construct it. The organisation was viewed

37
as an organism, as a mechanism, as a tree with deep roots, as a giant, as a spring
flower, as an umbrella, as a flowing water, as a body with a thousand eyes, as a
family, as a locomotive, as a hive etc. All these metaphors describe ways of
organisation and operation, ways in which their members relate, and also avenues
of intervention for change; for example, changing an organisation structured as an
organism makes us think about it as about a living being, which cannot be turned
off in order to be changed, and all change must happen on the go; the interpretation
of an organisation as a mechanism gives us a picture of programmed operation, of
change that can be achieved by turning the mechanism off, dismantling and
modifying it etc. The organisation is “like a poem” (Elliott, 1999: 14) or “can be
thought as a text” (Elliott, 1999: 15) that can be interpreted permanently, and the
beauty and the meanings of this poem are given by those who interpret it. The
poetic principle contains in itself the capacity of rapidly transforming the orga-
nisational environment; if the organisation is a dynamic construction generated
by individual interpretations, changing these interpretations through dialogue and
consensus result in the organisation itself changing.
The role of interpretations given to the organisation
During two of the meetings with practitioners from the area of social work we
asked the participants (two groups of 30 individuals) – who represented both
private and public institutions – to write down 15 adjectives related to the
organisation they were working in and a metaphor that would describe the orga-
nisation, being given a limited time (4 minutes). The participants in the first group
were asked to describe the organisation they came from without being given any
additional explanations about the process. Before the second group started writing
down their personal definitions, the researchers made a presentation concerning
the importance of definitions in constructing organisational realities, the im-
portance of appreciative language and of metaphors in constructing the orga-
nisation. When filling in the blank in the statement My organisation is..., the
individuals included in the experiment wrote down three types of adjectives:
a) negative, critical or hostile: indifferent, closed, rigid, conformist, chaotic,
authoritarian, poor, providing no motivation, sordid, disorganised, unrew-
arding, pessimistic, uninvolved, conflict-prone, ineffective, unprofessional,
apathetic, slow, hyper-bureaucratic, uninterested in people etc.
b) neutral in terms of emotional charge: interesting, systematized, objective,
necessary, average, professional, satisfactory etc.
c) positive, affirmative, approving: innovative, balanced, useful, active,
wise, welcoming, productive, dynamic, flexible, transparent, receptive etc.
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The two groups consisted of managers, social workers, psychologists etc., and
were considered experimental groups:
Table 1: The structure of experimental groups according to the organisations the
participants belong to
As far as the participants’ affiliation to the public or private organisational
environment, it can be noticed that the two groups had a similar structure; both
groups consisted of members in both governmental and non-governmental orga-
nisations. The first group was asked to describe the organisation using 15 adjec-
tives, without the researcher giving any details or any introduction concerning the
appreciative approach; in the case of the second group, the researcher started by
presenting in a general manner the use of the appreciative approach in the orga-
nisational environment, and only then asked the participants to describe their own
organisation. The results were the following:
Table 2: Repartition of perceptions in the two experimental groups
As a rule, people tend to think negatively about the organisations they belong
to; 76.7 % of the adjectives used by the subjects in the first group described their
organisations in negative terms. Positive opinions about their own organisations
were fewer – 13.3 % of the adjectives used in the first group. However, the
experiment we made provides enough reason for optimism in terms of the pos-
sibility to change rapidly any negative perceptions about an organisation; in group
two, which was influenced by a general presentation of the appreciative approach
in the organisational environment, the number of negative perceptions concerning
one’s own organisation was significantly lower (43.3 % of the adjectives used)
and the number of positive perceptions was double compared to the first group
(27.4 % compared to 13,3% in the first group) (see Table 2). Thus, a significant
part of the negative perceptions expressed by the participants were turned into
perceptions that are neutral from an emotional point of view; four instance, in
Type of organisation the
participants belong to
Group 1 Group 2
Total number of participants 30 30
State-run organisation 14 13
Private organisation 16 17
Adjectives Group 1 Group 2
Total number of adjectives 450 450
Negative adjectives 76.7 % 43.3 %
Neutral adjectives 10.0 % 29.3 %
Positive adjectives 13.3% 27.4 %
Total 100 % 100 %

39
group 1 neutral perceptions made up 10.0 % of the total, whereas in group 2 they
went up to 29.3 %; (see Table 2).
From the point of view of the participants’ membership in public or private
organisations, we can organise the results obtained in a table such as the one
below:
Table 3: Distribution of perceptions in the two groups as a function of the type of
organisation the participants belong to
It can be noticed that those employed by the governmental system use predo-
minantly negative adjectives in order to describe the environment they work in
(85.2 % of the adjectives used by the first group) and very few positive adjectives
(5.8 %). The positive adjectives used by the participants employed by the govern-
mental system came chiefly from individuals working in more socially rewarding
positions (department heads, service heads, managers etc.), and they define the
organisation in affirmative, positive terms. The change in attitude towards the
organisation took place rapidly, especially due to the fact that this change was
directed towards positive aspects and triggered by the introduction made by the
researcher concerning appreciative methods in social work; thus, the represen-
tatives of governmental institutions in the second group almost halved the number
of negative adjectives describing the organisations they worked in (43.6 %); the
number of positive adjectives increased almost four-fold, reaching a 23.1 % of the
total. The number of neutral adjectives given by the members of governmental
organisations increased more then three times (from 9.0 % to 33.3 %). Data
analysis shows that the most significant change in perception amongst the mem-
bers of governmental organisations was the drop in the number of negative
adjectives, which were transformed preponderantly into neutral and positive ones.
It can be noticed that the changes in negative perceptions are more visible amongst
the participants working in the governmental sector: these individuals have shown
a greater flexibility in changing the way they interpret the organisations they
work for.
The negative perception is also dominant in the nongovernmental system,
despite being less pronounced than in the governmental system (69.2 % negative
adjectives, compared to 85.2 % in the governmental system). The initial negative
perceptions of nongovernmental organisations members (10.8 %) were almost at
Governmental organisations Nongovernmental organisations List of adjectives
Group 1 Group 2 Group 1 Group 2
Negative adjectives (%) 85.2 43.6 69.2 43.1
Neutral adjectives (%) 9.0 33.3 10.8 26.3
Positive adjectives (%) 5.8 23.1 20.0 30.6
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the same level with that of negative perceptions among the members of
governmental organisations (9.0 %). However, the representatives of nongo-
vernmental organisations had a higher number of positive definitions for their
own organisations (20.0% positive adjectives, compared to 5.8% in the gover-
nmental system). One can notice the change in attitude towards the organisation
among the representatives of non-governmental organisations, the change in the
definitions they gave after the experiment; the number of negative adjectives
dropped from 69.2 % to 43.1 %, while the number of positive ones increased from
20.0 % to 30.6 % and the neutral ones from 10.8 % to 26.3%; among the
representatives of the nongovernmental institutions the drop in the number of
negative adjectives was accompanied by an increase in the number of neutral and
positive ones.
Conclusions
Despite the simplicity of the experiment, the dependent variables taken into
consideration argue in favour of the possibility of changing the interpretation
individuals give to their organisations, as a result of an external appreciative
influence exerted by a factor exterior to these organisations. Some organisations
are viewed as ineffective and bureaucratic also due to the fact that the interpre-
tations given by its members construct these definitions. Therefore we believe
that the practices of an organisation’s members reflect the interpretation people
give to that particular organisation. The strategies of nongovernmental orga-
nisations are devised by few of their members, and thus the feeling of ownership
is insufficiently developed in the mind of the people working in order to fulfil
these strategies. The mission of an organisation can be a motor for driving it, for
giving it direction, a source for the establishment of objectives and for their
fulfilment. When the members of nongovernmental organisations are not involved
in devising their missions, the latter are perceived as imposed on them, as exterior
to the organisation.
As a rule, people have a negative perception of the organisations they work in,
reflected in the statements they make about them; in the metaphors they use in
order to describe their own organisations. Negative interpretations are more
frequent in the public organisations sector than in the private one due to mana-
gement, communication and valorisation styles. Cultivating appreciative percep-
tions (discovering, understanding and amplifying them) results in real change in
the organisational environment, because it changes the system of interactions in
the organisation. The language used by the members of an organisation in order to
describe it is a social artefact, not just a mirror of reality; it is an engine for social
action and helps draw the map that precedes the future (guides the construction of
the organisation’s future). The application of appreciative inquiry in the

41
organisational environment may lead to a rapid change in the definitions the
members give to their own organisations, to the construction of contexts that can
cause the modification of an organisation’s values, and to changes in the value
system promoted in the organisational environment.
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