Appreciative Inquiry in The Organization: Exploring The Foundations, Understanding Implementation, Criticizing Action

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is an innovative, positive and participatory research method that was developed by Cooperrider and his professor Strivastva about thirty years ago in order to resolve generalization shortcomings of GT research and eliminating deficiencies of common organization development and change approaches. Following Constructivism and postmodernism, AI is built upon subjective assumptions and uses 8 principals named Constructivism, Simultaneity, Poetic, Anticipatory, Positive, Wholeness, Enactment and Free-Choice to facilitate attaining ideal future through creating a fair, participatory and positive climate in the organization. AI introduces affirmative topic choice, discover, dream, design and destiny as steps for having effective change in organization. This Article tries to create comprehensive understanding of AI by explaining the evolution, definitions, assumptions, principals and stages of it.