Evaluating Appreciative Inquiry: a relational constructionist perspective

Abstract

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) has become increasingly popular as a social constructionist approach to organizational change and development. Many claims are made about its status and value but there are few published evaluation studies. We discuss these matters by setting out our own version of social constructionism - and draw upon this to develop three themes. One key theme is that both AI and social constructionism should be viewed as variable social constructions and not fixed ‘things’. This means that AI manifests in many different ways in different local-cultural and localhistorical contextsi. A related theme is that, if theory and method co-define one another then AI is much more than just a method. Last, when evaluation is also viewed as a variable social construction some evaluation practices will be more consistent with the premises of constructionsim and AI than others. These themes are developed in five parts. In the first, we set out what we regard as some key premises of relational constructionism. In the second part we examine AI, its multiple meanings, and its central premises. We then explore links between relational constructionsim and AI. This brings us to the point where we can introduce evaluation and its potential relations with AI. In the final part we write of how AI and evaluation could be performed in ways that put relational constructionist premises ‘to work’. Here we reach the heart of our argument which is to suggest that a relational constructionist approach to AI could derive enormous benefits from a particular approach known as ‘responsive evaluation’.