Sarah Lewis, Jonathan Passmore & Stefan Cantore

London: Kogan Page, 2007.
272 pages. Hardback. £22.99.
ISBN: 978-0-74945-071-7

Reviewed by Kieran Duignan

This interesting collection of 14 chapters introduces organisational development as a ‘story’ rooted in beliefs of the power of conversations to ‘create new futures for people and organisations.

The authors are two chartered occupational psychologists and an organisational consultant; nine authoritative European and American practitioners of AI’s strengthbased approach to change contribute the case stories. They write in clear, enriched language.

The narrative includes a twofold taxonomy of organisational characterisations, a history of appreciative inquiry (AI), whose procreation they attribute to David Cooperrider about 1985, in-depth exploration of specific skills that support integrating conversational practice into organisational life and four illustrative case stories of the process in BP Castrol Marine, Nokia, World Café and Orbseal Technology Centre. It also has a workmanlike index and an appendix presents a selective list of resources for readers who wish to explore the AI method in more detail. Unsurprisingly, the authors associated AI with the rising wave of positive psychology although a larger historical lens might perhaps have been used to include in its scope antecedents some pragmatist psychologists in the first half of the last century.

A great merit of this book for psychologists and other coaching professionals lies in how they explain its effects of conversations as a recognised dynamic of organisational behaviour:

‘… conversation is by definition an emotional experience. It may involve dialogue, but, above all, it will move us as people to a different emotional place than that which we occupied before the conversation. What happens subsequently is our choice. We may choose to act differently, or we may not, but we will have experienced something different’ (p.81).

The authors’ care in providing a guide to conversational practice as a basis for organisational development that is both wellinformed and accessible is a second strength of the title. Here the format - exposition of the methodology combined with mindful case studies that are much more than victory logs - makes good reading.

Another strength of this book is the way in which the authors characterise beliefs that sustain conversational approaches to change. They challenge beliefs associated with organisations ‘as machines’ and advocate beliefs associated with organisations as ‘living human systems’.

A vital chapter of the book, on ‘Extending practice: working with story in organizations’, illustrates the power of AI and includes a useful table of questions of categories of questioning as well as facetspecific practical guidance on how to use the process of reflecting teams and to explore domains of experience.

At the same time, it leaves a sense of a need to take stock. To what extent is ‘appreciative inquiry’ a process of acting in a play or of creating one involving real risks? Why doesn’t the authors’ account of working with story in organisations examine narratives of episodes - such as in the rise and fall of Enron and the 24-hour collapse of the London Ambulance Service - which disclosed calamitous failures in change management? Why does their account omit a review research on happiness (as self-validation and as well-being ) and on unhappiness as clues to how such failures are parts of stories of painful risks of change management? Failing to consider the contours of stories that collapse and damage people unacceptably is a regrettable omission on the part of the authors.

These gaps raise further questions about how the authors constructed boundaries of their exploration of change management. The first two chapters which contrast assumptions about organisations as machinery and as human communities, appears to me to illustrate unduly restricted historical awareness on their part. For this specific contrast reads remarkably like a synopsis of models of ‘Theory X’ and ‘Theory Y’ presented in the classic 1960 study of the human side of enterprise by the co-inventor of organisational development, Douglas McGregor. As the book oddly makes no mention of him at all or of the ripple impact of his teaching and leadership on making sense of cultures of organisations, one is left to wonder to what extent the authors believe or imagine that organisational development began in 1985. This omission appears to reflect an unaccounted for selectivity in how the authors position AI in their construction of its ‘family tree’ which also omits any references to Jacob Moreno’s sociodrama either. In a contemporary vein, they also make no mention of the self-organised learning model of conversation at the heart of organisations elaborated by pioneering British coaching psychologists Laurie Thomas and Sheila Harri-Augstein, who did so much during the last two decades of the last century to enhance appreciation of stories of strengths of individuals and groups at work .

To me, the unduly restricted historical perspective somewhat diminishes the vitality of the title’s complexion and has limited their treatment of the scope of their subject. The significance of these observations lies in the authors’ apparent filter of relatively largescale organisations as the settings of optimum fit for AI as they don’t carefully analyse adaptations necessary to AI in micro and small organisations, the work milieux of a large proportion of members of society; it would have been useful to read about how AI may be interwoven into conversations with leaders and managers in such settings about commercial crises and as a prelude , and accompaniment, to balancing business scorecards.

Overall, this title offers a good introduction to the richness of narrative perspectives on organisational life. Where a coaching psychologist views the client’s story as a central dimension of his/her work, as I personally do, he/she is likely to benefit from studying it - even if it leaves him/her with a sense of that they authors don’t provide a sturdy enough guide to appreciating situations where collisions between stories of people and their organisation collide in ways that present the coach with challenging but out-of-focus, even scary, possibilities.