Appreciative Enquiry And HRD Research And Practice
Refereed Paper
Anderson, Valerie
Key words: Appreciative inquiry, HRD research, HRD theory, HRD practice; HRD scholarship. Appreciative enquiry and HRD research and practice.
Abstract
This paper evaluates the appreciative inquiry (AI) approach in relation to HRD research and practice. It challenges conventional distinctions between HRD theories developed by academics in institutional settings and HRD practice enacted in organisations and assesses whether AI may provide a robust process of HRD knowledge development to build on the insights of both scholars and practitioners. The paper is based on an evaluation of a ‘critical case’: a multi-institutional HRD project that included some AI principles and discusses the difficulties as well as the benefits achieved. The paper highlights difficulties experienced in ‘letting go’ of traditional problem-orientated scholarly processes; in overcoming the scholar-practitioner divide in a context of different occupational demands, reward systems and priorities and in achieving systemic change. However, the paper also shows how, in addition to ‘local theory’ AI may have the potential to contribute to instrumental and to conceptual knowledge.
Introduction
Appreciative inquiry (AI) is a form of action research used particularly in organisation development (OD). It is grounded in a humanist, social constructionist approach to knowledge (Elliot, 1999) and is rooted in assertions about the potential power of positive psychology and ‘image’ (Watkins & Mhor, 2001).This paper is concerned with the potential contribution of AI to research and practice in HRD. Research is defined here as”any systematic process of critical investigation and evaluation, theory building, data collection, analysis and codification” (Nutley et al, 2007: 298).
As a relatively new area of enquiry and practice, incorporating a range of interests and disciplines (McGoldrick, et al, 2001; Gold et. al., 2003; Sambrook 2004). HRD is difficult to define, but in this paper it is understood in an inclusive way to involve learning support and facilitation processes at individual, group, organisational and societal levels (Bing, et al, 2003; McGoldrick et al, 2002: 396; Wang and Swanson, 2008).
The relatively unbounded nature of HRD, and the diverse backgrounds of those involved, means that a variety of different, overlapping ’ways of knowing’ are acknowledged including: empirical research, ’theory-building’ processes that draw on a range of different areas such as: psychology, sociology, economics, anthropology, systems and complexity, and more intuitive or informal theory building from practice and experience generate tacit knowledge (Lynham, 2002; McGuire et al, 2008; Nutley et al, 2007). However, although many ’routes to knowledge’ about HRD are valued there is little interaction between the communities engaged in these different processes. HRD practice is mostly influenced by implicit ’theories-in-practice’ (Alvesson and Deetz; 2000). At the same time, the prioritisation of ‘scientific rigour’ over ‘relevance’ (Knights and Scarborough, 2010) amongst academic researchers means that practitioners have little awareness of or enthusiasm towards, the results of research (Starkey and Madan, 2001).
Key features of AI are application, practice and collaboration; the aim is to achieve innovation and change through appreciating and understanding what works, and commitment to ‘provocation’ and being ‘visionary’ as well as pragmatic (Cooperrider & Srivastva, 1987). AI may be seen as a productive way of achieving closer links between research and ’research users’ in a context where both parties are able to bring their experience, values and understanding to the local context and it may potentially be helpful to overcome the ’research / practice’ divide. However the issues involved are under-researched (Nutley et al, 2007) in particular the extent to which AI can contribute to more formal theory development and to empirically-based forms of knowledge beyond a local context.
This paper contributes an examination of an AI project. It sets out to discuss issues rather than undertake an empirical test through evaluation of a ‘critical case’: a multi-institutional HRD project that included some AI principles.
Research questions
The critical case considered here was a policy-related HRD project funded by the UK Higher Education Academy, Business Management, Accountancy and Finance (BMAF) subject centre. It focused on HRD issues relating to the support and development of new career academics in UK Business Schools. Through an evaluation and discussion of this critical case the objectives of this paper are:
1. To analyse the AI approach and its potential contribution to knowledge development from the perspectives of the different stakeholders involved.
2. To evaluate the AI approach as a means to overcome the scholar-practitioner divide in HRD.
3. To evaluate the potential of AI to contribute theoretical and empirical knowledge as well as generating practical insights.
Literature review
Before addressing the literature about AI the first part of this review considers debates about the relationship between research and practice in management and organisational research generally and HRD specifically. Four issues are explored: the different time scales and priorities of the academic and practitioner communities; access to research-generated knowledge outcomes; perceptions of purpose, quality and utility of research; and the underlying paradigm of the ’research use’ and knowledge creation processes.
Research and practice in HRD
In an area like HRD a productive relationship between research, policy and practice is desirable but remains stubbornly problematic. A very visible reason for the separation of research and practice communities in any discipline is the different time pressures, demands, reward systems and priorities of the two communities leading to different judgements about the nature of ’valuable’ knowledge and different views about quality and relevance. For academics, research quality indicators at institutional, societal and global levels encourage a prioritisation on conceptual work over an extended time frame that is intended to make a lasting ’contribution to knowledge’. Research projects span considerable time frames and aim to achieve a depth and focus of analysis. The consequence is a potential ’time-delay’ of up to five years between an original research process and its dissemination in a scholarly journal. For practitioners the emphasis is on achieving multiple results in a short time-frame and responding quickly to changing management priorities. As a result new initiatives and organisational processes may be launched that require rapid evaluation (Kulik and Bainbridge, 2006; Hutchinson and Purcell, 2007; McGuire et al, 2007). In such circumstances ’practice’ runs ahead of ’theory’ (see, for example Hamlin et al, 2008; Scullion et al, 2010 for examples of this phenomenon for coaching and talent management). In such circumstances practitioners attribute more value to instrumental and legitimative forms of knowledge rather than to conceptual knowledge generated by academic research. However, such prescriptive and instrumental knowledge is likely to become redundant very quickly and is, therefore, less likely to achieve the ’gold standard’ expected within the academic community (Walsh et al, 2007).
A second issue is access to knowledge. In order to generate research outcomes perceived as ’good quality’ academics prioritise publication in an increasingly limited number of peer reviewed ’scholarly’ journals. These outlets are rarely, if ever, accessed by practitioners who prefer magazines, practitioner-focused books, reports from government or specialist organisations, or more social forms of information sharing through practitioner conferences, seminars or workshops. Indeed for practitioners, personal contacts have been shown to be the most important source of information about research (Sheldon, 2005; Rickinson, 2005; Weiss, 1999).
The third area of difference relates to the purpose of research and a distinction has been suggested between knowledge production and research processes leading to ’Mode 1’ and ’Mode 2’ outcomes (van Aken, 2005; Burgoyne and James, 2006). The purpose of Mode 1 research, often favoured by members of the academic community, is to describe, explain and predict phenomena. This is a form of ‘explanatory science’ in the tradition of ‘pure’ research; a model which has become progressively embedded within the management and HRD research community as an indicator of ‘worth’ and ‘quality’. An alternative, complementary (Mode 2) form of research, utilised extensively in other applied disciplines such as medicine and engineering, has been advocated (see for example, van Aken, 2005; Burgoyne and James, 2006). The purpose of Mode 2 research is to develop knowledge that can be used to design solutions to ’field’ problems. As a form of knowledge production and research based on ’design science’, Mode 2 research is less dismissive of ‘prescriptive’ knowledge as practitioner-partners and researchers formulate research problems and disseminate and apply outcomes. Difficulties in this approach in HRD have been documented, however; specifically the tensions for both researchers and practitioners involved in attempting simultaneous theory development and prescriptive knowledge generation (Burgoyne and James, 2006).
A fourth issue is the process of research, dissemination and application. Traditional policy-led approaches to the relationship between research and practice in organisational and societal contexts are underpinned by assumptions about a ’rational-linear’ process where knowledge is generated by academics as ’research outcomes’ that are then disseminated to be adopted, adapted or applied by practitioners or policy-makers (Nutley et al, 2007; Glasziou and Haynes, 2005; Starkey and Madan, 2001). Whilst it is intuitively attractive, there is scant evidence that this approach is enacted in any policy or practice environment within the HRD, HRM or adult education domains. This may reflect the limitations of the positivist and objectivist assumptions about knowledge creation which fail to take account of the dynamic and multi-paradigmatic qualities of a field of enquiry such as HRD (Upton and Egan, 2010).
Alternative approaches to understanding the research and application process, grounded in constructivist assumptions of knowledge creation (Nutley, et al, 2007; Albaek, 1995) highlight its ’messy’ and socially interactive nature. Huberman (1994), for example, argues that the research/knowledge creation process is complex, contingent and multi-faceted and that practitioners also ‘frame’ research findings they come across in the light of their tacit knowledge and pre-existing experience.
In summary, traditional approaches to understanding the relationship between research and practice under-estimate the extent to which both research and practice may well involve processes that are contentious, contradictory, partial, contingent and provisional and easy and straightforward answers to practical problems are unlikely (Nutley et al, 2007). The benefits of bringing the two communities together are increasingly advocated (see, for example, Knights and Scarborough, 2010; McGuire et al, 2007) but are not likely to be successful whilst research in HRD leads to outcomes that are reductionist rather than integrative, that lead to a micro-macro divide in theory building and are rarely accessed by practitioners (Lynham, 2002; Upton and Egan, 2010).
The development of networks of relationships spanning practitioner and academic groups that can sustain ‘moments of translation’ are increasingly seen by scholars as the way forward to: enable fuller adoption of multiple methods and improve theory building to generate research outcomes focused on practitioner / application issues (McGuire et al, 2007; Lynham, 2002). The social constructionist approach to research and knowledge creation highlights the importance of organisational culture as a mediating factor in the interplay between knowledge, politics and power and the importance of appropriate institutional and organisational processes to enable a narrowing of the ’cultural gap’ between the two communities and greater interaction between them.
In this context action research strategies are attractive although such approaches but may be limited to organisational rather than policy issues. However, appreciative inquiry, which claims to be a distinctive approach within this broad methodology, has been used within a range of policy related areas in “social disciplines” such as health, education and social work. The main features of the approach, and its potential relevance to HRD, are considered in the next section.
Appreciative inquiry
Appreciative inquiry forms part of a ‘family’ of action-orientated research approaches. As such a relationship between the process and content of the inquiry and between researchers and participants is assumed. Although situated within a humanist approach to knowledge creation, and inspired by the positive psychology movement AI exponents cite an eclectic mixture of research approaches within its remit including: the scientific, the theoretical; the metaphysical; the normative and the pragmatic. (Cooperrider et al., 2008; Hart et al, 2008). The AI approach was first articulated in the 1980s by Cooperrider and Srivastva (1987) as an alternative to traditional action research approaches. They suggested that action research failed to challenge the premise that legitimate knowledge is only to be found through an emphasis on the rational, objective, empirical and problematic (Zolno, 2002). In organisational and policy contexts this ’deficit approach’ with an explicit focus on dysfunctional features is seen as constraining the imagination and the process of practice improvement and knowledge creation, thereby limiting the achievement of systemic change outcomes (Ludema, 2001; Hayes, 2007; Rogers & Fraser, 2003).
AI is rooted in social constructionism and argues for the generative power of positive imagery (Fitzgerald et al, 2002). As such it is counter-intuitive to Western academic culture where analysis processes tend to be grounded in objective and rational ‘detachment’, skepticism and doubt (Zolno, 2002). The aim of AI is to find out the best of ‘what is’; to establish ideas of ‘what might be’; to enable consent about ‘what should be’ and to foster experience of ‘what can be’. Instead of identifying problems, appreciative inquiry practitioners examine areas of strength, both those that are already known and those that may be unknown (Watkins & Mhor, 2001). Explanations of the approach have focused on its potential to: appreciate, initiate, enquire, envision, dialogue, imagine and innovate (Cooperrider & Srivastva, 1987;), sometimes articulated more emotively in North America by words such as: ’discover’, ’dream’, ’design’ and ’destiny’ (Fitzgerald et al, 2002; Zolno, 2002) through a process that involves application, practice and collaboration. The aim is to begin by appreciating what works and to understand ‘how’ it works. The inclusion of ‘envisioning’ or ‘imagining’ involves a commitment to ‘provocation’; being ‘visionary’ and future-orientated as well as pragmatic in order to achieve innovation and change (Cooperrider & Srivastva, 1987).
The core principles of AI are resonant with the humanist psychology literature and with adult development theories (Hart et al, 2008). Appreciative inquiry has been used in a range of management development, organisation development, adult education and HRD settings in a range of sectors (see, for example, Luthens and Jennson, 2002; Richer et al, 2009; Conklin and Hart, 2009). In spite of its potential benefits there are very few systematic evaluations of the approach and a number of questions remain. First, in its quest to work from the positive, appreciative inquiry may overlook tensions and ambiguities, highlighted particularly by the critical HRD literature, in processes and relationships that result from the multiple and divided realities of institutional life (Grant & Humphries, 2006; Callahan, 2007; Fitzgerald et al, 2010). Second, it is possible that the affirmative stance taken in appreciative inquiry encourages excessive optimism and the avoidance of dealing with problem areas so that dysfunctional perceptions and behaviours in organisational settings and other substantive problems remain unexamined (Rogers & Fraser, 2003).The potential for an overly descriptive rather than an analytical approach has also been highlighted (Grant & Humphries, 2006; Bushe, 2007; Fitzgerald et al, 2010) and a fourth area of critique is whether appreciative inquiry is just another ‘management fad’ more suited to management consultancy leading to interventions that may not result in lasting change and theoretical insight underpinned by rigorous academic practice (Grant & Humphries, 2006; Bushe, 2007).