Organizational Generativity: v. 3

An exciting development in the last decade has been the emergence of Appreciative Inquiry that nowadays drives the action of many individuals, organizations and communities around the world. Appreciative Inquiry has touched and affected the life of thousands who apply its principles in a wide range of settings including industry, government, spiritual and not-for-profit organizations. The "Advances in Appreciative Inquiry" series advocates an organizational science that focuses on advancing a scholarship of positive human organizations, positive relationships and positive modalities of change, which promise to be of world benefit for individuals, organizations and communities. The book series is dedicated to building such a discipline through the advancement of Appreciative Inquiry as an approach to organizational inquiry and human development, and through the interdisciplinary articulation of non-deficit theories of positive change processes in human systems. To appreciate means to value or to recognize that which has value. It is a way of knowing and recognizing the best in life. To appreciate also means to increase in value.
Combining the two - appreciation is a way of knowing the best and appreciation as an increase in value - suggests that appreciative inquiry is simultaneously a life-centric form of study and a constructive mode of action, where valuing is creating, and where inquiry and change are powerfully related and understood as a seamless integral whole. Guided by the ethos of Appreciative Inquiry, the book series supports a relentless inquiry into the true, the good, the better and the possible. It is dedicated to advancing a 'scholarship of the positive' and 'positive scholarship'. The book series aims to facilitate and emergent dialogue within the social sciences and invites contributions from the broad spectrum ranging between traditional scholarship and accounts of hands-on experience.
It welcomes appreciative and constructive questioning of the humanistic, social, political and economic consequences of any variant of Appreciative Inquiry from organizational behavior and management theorists, organizational development practitioners, sociologists, psychologists, feminists, economists, historians, philosophers, and anyone else who is involved with appreciative studies and wishes to be engaged in a dialogue. The series editors are committed to give voice to a range of new topics and to support innovative and challenging work. This book series is available electronically online.