Chapter 3. David Cooperrider's Appreciative Inquiry — The Source Model
In which we honor the revolutionary insight that organizations grow in the direction of what they most persistently ask questions about — and discover why that insight, luminous as it is, yearns for a body.
The Question That Changed Everything
In the early 1980s, a young doctoral student at Case Western Reserve University sat across from a physician at the Cleveland Clinic, notebook in hand. He was supposed to be studying organizational dysfunction — the conventional research paradigm of the time. Find the problems. Diagnose the root causes. Prescribe the fix.
But something unexpected happened.
David Cooperrider noticed that when he asked people about what was working — about their peak experiences, their moments of greatest vitality and collaboration — something shifted. Not just in the data he collected, but in the people themselves. Their posture changed. Their eyes brightened. Their voices found a different register, richer and more animated. The very act of inquiring into life-giving forces seemed to generate more of those forces.
This was not a minor methodological tweak. It was a revolution in the philosophy of organizational change.
What Cooperrider stumbled upon — and then spent the next four decades articulating, refining, and championing — was a deceptively simple yet profoundly radical idea: the questions we ask determine the world we find. Organizations do not need to be fixed. They need to be appreciated — in the fullest sense of that word — and then invited to dream forward from their strongest foundations.
This chapter traces the origins, principles, and architecture of Appreciative Inquiry as Cooperrider conceived it. We will honor the brilliance of the source model with genuine depth, examine its core methodology, explore its remarkable successes, and — with equal honesty — name the places where the model reaches the edge of its own design. Because it is precisely at those edges that the Luminous extension begins.
A Brief History of Deficit-Based Change
To understand the revolutionary nature of Appreciative Inquiry, we must first understand what it replaced.
For most of the twentieth century, organizational development operated under what we might call the diagnostic-prescriptive paradigm. Its logic ran like this:
- Something is wrong.
- Identify the root cause.
- Design an intervention to fix it.
- Implement the fix.
- Evaluate whether the problem has been solved.
This model borrowed heavily from medicine and engineering. It treated organizations like machines with broken parts or patients with identifiable diseases. The consultant arrived, much like a surgeon, to locate the pathology and excise it.
The approach was not without merit. Genuinely dysfunctional systems do need honest diagnosis. Safety failures, ethical violations, and structural inequities all demand clear-eyed identification. We should not romanticize what deficit-based approaches address.
But the paradigm carried a hidden cost. When you organize an entire change process around what is wrong, several things happen:
- Attention narrows. People become experts in their organization's failures rather than its possibilities.
- Defensiveness rises. Being studied as a "problem" activates threat responses. People protect territory rather than share insight.
- Energy depletes. Problem-focused conversations are exhausting. They generate the very fatigue they claim to diagnose.
- Identity calcifies. Organizations begin to see themselves through the lens of their deficits. "We're the company that can't communicate" becomes a self-fulfilling identity.
- Innovation stalls. The imagination required for genuine transformation gets consumed by the anxious labor of problem-solving.
By the late 1970s, a growing number of organizational theorists were sensing these limitations, even if they couldn't yet articulate the alternative. The field was ready for a different question.
David Cooperrider asked it.
The Birth of Appreciative Inquiry
The Cleveland Clinic Discovery
Cooperrider's doctoral research at the Cleveland Clinic, conducted under the mentorship of Suresh Srivastva, is one of the great origin stories in organizational science. Assigned to study the human dimensions of organizational functioning, Cooperrider began with the standard deficit approach — interviewing staff about problems, conflicts, and failures.
But he also asked about peak experiences: Tell me about a time when you felt most alive, most effective, most engaged in your work here. The responses to these questions were qualitatively different — more detailed, more energized, more generative. And something else happened: the interviews themselves seemed to produce positive change. Departments that had been studied through an appreciative lens showed increased cooperation and morale, even before any formal intervention.
Srivastva recognized the significance immediately. He encouraged Cooperrider to develop the insight into a full theoretical framework. The resulting dissertation, and the series of papers that followed, introduced Appreciative Inquiry to the world.
The Constructionist Foundation
Appreciative Inquiry did not emerge in a philosophical vacuum. It drew upon several intellectual streams that were converging in the 1980s:
Social constructionism, particularly the work of Kenneth Gergen, provided the epistemological foundation. If reality is socially constructed — if the "facts" of organizational life are shaped by the conversations, narratives, and meaning-making processes of the people within them — then changing the conversation literally changes the reality.
Positive image theory contributed the psychological mechanism. Research in placebo effects, Pygmalion dynamics, positive visualization, and learned helpfulness demonstrated that positive images of the future generate positive action in the present. The heliotropic hypothesis — the idea that living systems move toward that which gives them life, much as plants turn toward light — became a central metaphor.
Generative theory, as articulated by Gergen and others, suggested that the highest purpose of social science is not merely to describe what exists but to generate new possibilities for social action. Theory should be provocative — it should expand the realm of the possible.
New science perspectives, including insights from quantum physics, complexity theory, and self-organizing systems, offered a vision of reality as fundamentally relational, emergent, and participatory — a far cry from the mechanistic worldview of traditional organizational theory.
From these streams, Cooperrider and his colleagues distilled a set of core principles that would anchor the practice of Appreciative Inquiry for decades to come.
The Five Principles of Appreciative Inquiry
Appreciative Inquiry rests on five foundational principles. Each one represents a departure from conventional assumptions about organizations and change:
1. The Constructionist Principle
Words create worlds.
Organizations exist as living, human constructions — not as fixed, objective entities. The language we use to describe organizational reality does not merely reflect that reality; it actively shapes it. When we talk about "resistance to change," we create resistance to change. When we talk about "readiness for transformation," we create readiness for transformation.
This principle invites a profound humility about the power of framing. The consultant who walks into a room and says, "Let's identify your top five problems" has already begun to construct a particular organizational reality. The facilitator who says, "Let's discover what gives life to this organization at its best" constructs a very different one.
2. The Simultaneity Principle
Inquiry and change are not separate moments. They happen simultaneously.
This is perhaps Cooperrider's most radical insight. Traditional change models assume a sequence: first you study the system, then you design an intervention, then you implement it. Appreciative Inquiry collapses this sequence. The moment you ask a question, you have already begun to change the system. The first question is fateful — it sets the direction of the entire inquiry and, therefore, the direction of the change.
Consider the difference between asking a team, "Why do our projects always run over budget?" and asking, "Tell me about a project where we delivered exceptional value — what made that possible?" Both questions will produce detailed answers. Both will shape what the team pays attention to next. But they will produce very different futures.
3. The Poetic Principle
Organizations are open books, not closed texts.
An organization's story is constantly being co-authored by its members. Like a poem, it can be read and reinterpreted in multiple ways, and the interpretation we choose matters immensely. The past is not a fixed archive of facts but a living resource that can be revisited, reinterpreted, and re-storied.
This principle liberates organizations from the tyranny of a single narrative. The company that "always fails at innovation" may also be the company that "persists with extraordinary tenacity" — it depends on which chapters are highlighted and how the story is told.
4. The Anticipatory Principle
The image of the future guides current behavior.
Human systems are perpetually projecting ahead. The images, visions, and anticipations that members hold about the future powerfully shape present-day action. An organization that collectively imagines a thriving future begins to behave differently now — making decisions, allocating resources, and relating to one another in ways that are consistent with that anticipated future.
This principle connects AI to a vast body of research on self-fulfilling prophecies, expectancy effects, and prospective psychology. It suggests that the most important resource for organizational change is not data about the past but compelling images of the future.
5. The Positive Principle
Positive questions lead to positive change.
The more positive the questions we ask, the more lasting and successful the change effort. This is not naive optimism or the denial of difficulty. It is a pragmatic observation grounded in research: positive emotions broaden attention, build cognitive resources, create resilience, and foster more creative problem-solving (as Barbara Fredrickson's broaden-and-build theory would later confirm).
Cooperrider and his colleagues observed that momentum for change requires large amounts of positive affect and social bonding — things like hope, excitement, inspiration, and joy. Deficit-based approaches drain these resources. Appreciative approaches generate them.
The 4-D Cycle: The Methodology in Motion
From these principles, Cooperrider and his collaborators developed a practical methodology known as the 4-D Cycle. This cycle provides the structural backbone for Appreciative Inquiry engagements and has been used in thousands of organizations across every sector and continent.
Discovery: "What Gives Life?"
The Discovery phase is the archeological expedition into organizational greatness. Through structured interviews, storytelling, and collective reflection, participants uncover the organization's "positive core" — the constellation of strengths, values, best practices, competencies, relationships, and life-giving forces that represent the organization at its best.
Key activities include:
- Appreciative interviews: Paired conversations using carefully crafted questions designed to elicit stories of peak experience, core values, and generative relationships.
- Thematic analysis: Collaborative identification of the themes, patterns, and life-giving forces that emerge from the interviews.
- Positive core mapping: Creating a visual or narrative representation of the organization's deepest strengths.
The power of Discovery lies in its generative quality. Participants do not merely report on the past — they re-experience it. The act of telling a story about a peak moment reactivates the emotions, insights, and relational connections associated with that moment. Discovery is not data collection; it is organizational revitalization.
Example: A regional hospital system used the Discovery phase to interview over 500 staff members about their most meaningful patient care experiences. The themes that emerged — presence under pressure, small acts of extraordinary kindness, the courage to advocate — became the foundation for a new organizational identity that replaced the previous deficit narrative of "understaffed and overwhelmed."
Dream: "What Might Be?"
The Dream phase uses the positive core discovered in the first phase as a launching pad for collective imagination. If this is who we are at our best, what would the world look like if those qualities were fully expressed and amplified?
Key activities include:
- Visioning exercises: Creative processes where participants imagine the organization three, five, or ten years in the future, operating at its full potential.
- Provocative propositions (also called "possibility statements"): Bold, affirmative statements that describe the organization as if the dream were already realized. For example: "We are an organization where every employee feels their contribution matters and where innovation emerges naturally from everyday conversations."
- Creative expression: Some AI processes use art, drama, storytelling, or other creative modalities to give form to the collective dream.
The Dream phase is where Appreciative Inquiry most clearly departs from conventional strategic planning. It does not begin with gap analysis ("Where are we vs. where do we need to be?") but with aspiration rooted in demonstrated capacity ("Given who we already are at our best, what becomes possible?").
Example: A global manufacturing company used the Dream phase to envision a future where sustainability was not a compliance burden but a source of competitive advantage and employee pride. The provocative propositions generated during this phase directly informed a five-year sustainability strategy that exceeded industry benchmarks.
Design: "What Should Be?"
The Design phase translates dreams into organizational architecture. It asks: What structures, processes, systems, and relationships would need to be in place for the dream to become everyday reality?
Key activities include:
- Social architecture design: Revisiting organizational structures, roles, communication patterns, governance systems, and resource allocation through the lens of the collective dream.
- Prototype development: Creating small-scale experiments or pilot programs that embody aspects of the dream.
- Stakeholder engagement: Ensuring that the design reflects diverse perspectives and addresses practical constraints without losing the aspirational quality of the dream.
The Design phase requires a delicate balance. It must honor the expansiveness of the Dream while attending to the realities of budgets, timelines, politics, and human limitation. The best Design processes maintain what Cooperrider calls "practical idealism" — grounded enough to implement, bold enough to transform.
Example: An international NGO used the Design phase to restructure its regional offices, moving from a hierarchical reporting model to a networked learning community. The new design was directly inspired by the dream of "an organization that learns as fast as the world changes."
Destiny (sometimes called Delivery): "What Will Be?"
The Destiny phase is about sustaining momentum and actualizing the design. It moves from collective dreaming and designing into ongoing action, learning, and improvisation.
Key activities include:
- Action planning: Identifying specific commitments, timelines, and accountability structures.
- Improvisation and emergence: Recognizing that implementation is not a mechanical process but an adaptive, creative one that requires ongoing attention and adjustment.
- Celebration and storytelling: Regularly honoring progress, sharing stories of success, and reinforcing the positive narrative that sustains change.
- Continuous inquiry: Building appreciative practices into the ongoing life of the organization so that the 4-D Cycle becomes a way of being, not just a one-time event.
Cooperrider himself came to prefer the word Destiny over Delivery because it emphasizes the emergent, unfolding quality of genuine transformation. Destiny is not a fixed endpoint — it is a living trajectory shaped by ongoing appreciative attention.
Example: A school district that completed an AI process embedded appreciative interviews into its annual teacher evaluation process, transforming what had been a dreaded compliance exercise into a source of professional renewal. Five years later, teacher retention had increased by 22%, and the district was regularly cited as one of the best places to work in education.
The Remarkable Track Record
In the four decades since its introduction, Appreciative Inquiry has been applied in an extraordinary range of contexts:
- Corporate transformation: Companies including British Airways, John Deere, Verizon, and hundreds of others have used AI for strategic planning, culture change, and leadership development.
- Community development: The United Nations Global Compact used AI with organizations in over 100 countries. The "Imagine Chicago" initiative applied AI principles to citywide youth engagement.
- Healthcare: Hospitals and health systems have used AI to improve patient experience, reduce burnout, and foster cultures of safety and innovation.
- Education: Schools, universities, and educational systems have applied AI to curriculum design, teacher development, and student engagement.
- Peacebuilding: AI has been used in post-conflict reconciliation processes in Nepal, Nigeria, and other contexts where conventional approaches had failed.
- Interfaith dialogue: The United Religions Initiative, one of the largest interfaith organizations in the world, was built using AI principles.
The scale of some AI engagements is breathtaking. The "AI Summit" format, developed by Cooperrider and others, has brought together hundreds — sometimes thousands — of stakeholders simultaneously for large-scale appreciative planning. The Roadway Express Summit, for instance, involved over 3,000 employees in a single change process that contributed to a dramatic financial turnaround.
These are not small accomplishments. Appreciative Inquiry has demonstrated, convincingly and repeatedly, that focusing on strengths generates real, measurable organizational change.
Strengths of the Source Model
Before we explore limitations, let us name what Appreciative Inquiry gets profoundly right:
It honors human dignity. By beginning with what works, AI communicates a fundamental respect for the people within the system. It says: You are not a collection of problems to be solved. You are a living system with gifts, strengths, and unrealized potential.
It generates energy for change. Deficit-based approaches deplete energy. Appreciative approaches generate it. This is not a philosophical preference — it is a practical reality. Change requires sustained effort, and sustained effort requires motivation, hope, and connection.
It is genuinely democratic. AI processes, especially in their Summit format, involve large numbers of people in co-creating the future. This distributes ownership of the change process far more broadly than expert-driven consulting models.
It produces actionable results. AI is not merely a feel-good exercise. When well-facilitated, it generates concrete strategies, measurable outcomes, and sustainable change.
It is adaptable. The AI framework has been successfully applied across cultures, sectors, scales, and contexts — a testament to the robustness of its underlying principles.
It changes the change agent. Practitioners of AI consistently report that the methodology transforms not only the organizations they work with but their own orientation to the world. Learning to ask appreciative questions is a practice that reshapes perception itself.
Honest Limitations: Where the Source Model Reaches Its Edges
To honor a tradition is not to idealize it. And part of what makes the Luminous extension possible is an honest, compassionate naming of the places where conventional AI reaches the edges of its design. These are not failures — they are invitations to evolution.
1. The Cognitive Emphasis
Traditional AI is primarily a language-based, cognitively mediated process. Its power lies in reframing narratives, asking different questions, telling different stories. This is genuinely transformative — and it is also incomplete.
When Cooperrider observed that appreciative interviews changed people's posture, brightened their eyes, and altered their vocal register, he was noticing something that went beyond cognition. He was noticing somatic change — shifts in the body that accompanied shifts in narrative. But the AI framework, as typically practiced, does not systematically attend to or leverage these bodily dimensions.
The story is told in the mind. The transformation lives in the body. When AI remains primarily cognitive, it risks producing what we might call "appreciative understanding without appreciative embodiment" — people who can articulate a new narrative but whose nervous systems, muscle patterns, and somatic habits remain organized around the old one.
2. The Shadow Question
Appreciative Inquiry has been criticized — sometimes fairly, sometimes unfairly — for being "too positive." The fair version of this critique is not that AI ignores problems (skilled AI practitioners absolutely address real challenges) but that the framework lacks an explicit methodology for working with shadow material.
Every organization has unacknowledged grief, unexpressed anger, unmetabolized trauma, and unexamined assumptions. These do not disappear when attention shifts to strengths. They go underground — into the body, into side conversations, into passive resistance, into the gap between what people say in appreciative interviews and what they feel in their bones.
A truly comprehensive approach must be able to hold both the positive core and the shadow — not by abandoning appreciation but by expanding the container large enough to include what has been excluded.
3. The Sustainability Gap
Many AI practitioners have observed a pattern: the process generates tremendous energy and enthusiasm, followed by a gradual return to baseline. The "AI high" fades. Old patterns reassert themselves. The positive narrative starts to feel hollow if it is not anchored in something deeper than words.
This is not a failure of the methodology but a limitation of its anchoring mechanism. When change lives primarily in new language and new stories, it is vulnerable to the gravitational pull of old habits. Something more is needed — something that anchors the new vision in the body, in the nervous system, in the felt sense of organizational life.
4. The Facilitation Bottleneck
Because AI depends heavily on the quality of questions asked and the facilitation of collective dialogue, the skill of the facilitator is critical. But traditional AI training focuses primarily on cognitive and conversational skills — how to frame questions, how to manage group process, how to synthesize themes.
What is less often taught is somatic facilitation — how to read the energy of a room, how to sense when a group's nervous system is activated or collapsed, how to use one's own body as an instrument of attunement. These skills are not optional extras. They are essential to the depth of transformation that AI promises.
5. The Cultural Assumption
Appreciative Inquiry, like most organizational development methodologies, was born in a Western, English-speaking, largely corporate context. Its emphasis on verbal articulation, individual storytelling, and explicit visioning reflects particular cultural assumptions about how change happens.
In cultures where knowledge is transmitted through silence, movement, ritual, or collective embodiment rather than individual narrative, conventional AI may need significant adaptation. The principles remain sound — but the methodology may need to find expression through different channels.
Why the Somatic Dimension: The Evolution Toward Embodied Practice
Each of the limitations named above points in the same direction: toward the body.
The cognitive emphasis calls for a somatic complement — practices that anchor new narratives in new bodily patterns. The shadow question calls for a somatic container — the capacity to hold difficult material in the body without being overwhelmed. The sustainability gap calls for somatic anchoring — ways to stabilize change at a neurological level, not just a narrative one. The facilitation bottleneck calls for somatic literacy — the ability to read and work with the embodied dimensions of group process. And the cultural assumption calls for somatic universality — recognizing that while stories are culturally specific, the body is a shared human ground.
This is not a critique of Cooperrider's vision. It is a fulfillment of it.
Remember what Cooperrider himself observed at the Cleveland Clinic: that appreciative questions changed people's bodies — their posture, their breathing, their facial expression, their vocal quality. The somatic dimension was present from the very beginning. It was visible in the data. It simply was not systematically developed as part of the methodology.
The Luminous extension begins where this observation left off. It asks: What if we attended to those bodily shifts not as side effects of good questions but as the primary medium of organizational transformation?
What if the warmth in the chest during an appreciative interview is not just a pleasant accompaniment to the story but a signal from the body's own intelligence about what matters most? What if the softening of facial muscles in a group visioning process is not merely a sign of relaxation but an indication that the collective nervous system is moving toward coherence? What if the deepening of breath during a peak-experience narrative is not just physiology but the body's way of saying yes to its own potential?
These are not speculative questions. They are grounded in converging evidence from affective neuroscience, polyvagal theory, somatic psychology, and contemplative science. And they open the door to a practice of Appreciative Inquiry that is not merely talked about but lived in the body — felt in the bones, anchored in the nervous system, expressed through the quality of presence that practitioners bring to every conversation.
Reflection Questions
Before moving forward into the Luminous framework, take a moment with these questions — not just as intellectual exercises but as invitations to notice what happens in your body as you consider them:
- When you recall a peak experience in your own work or organizational life, what happens in your body? Notice the specific sensations — warmth, expansion, softening, energizing. Where do they live? How long do they last?
- Think of an organizational change process you have experienced or facilitated. Was the body included? Were participants invited to notice their physical responses, or was the process entirely verbal and cognitive? What might have been different if somatic awareness had been part of the design?
- Where do you notice the "shadow" in your own organization — the things that are not said, the tensions that live beneath the surface? Can you sense where those unsaid things live in the collective body? In tight shoulders during meetings? In held breath when certain topics arise? In the quality of eye contact — or its absence?
- What is your personal relationship with the tension between "positive" and "honest"? Do you tend to lean toward appreciation at the expense of difficult truths, or toward critique at the expense of acknowledging what is working? Can you feel this preference in your body?
- If Appreciative Inquiry had a somatic signature — a way it feels in the body when it is practiced well — what would that be? Take a moment to imagine yourself in a beautifully facilitated AI process. What do you feel? Where? How does that sensation differ from being in a problem-solving meeting?
Practical Exercise: The Appreciative Body Scan
This exercise bridges conventional Appreciative Inquiry with the somatic dimension we will develop in subsequent chapters. It can be done alone or with a partner.
Duration: 15–20 minutes
Instructions:
- Settle into a comfortable position. Take three slow breaths, allowing your exhale to be slightly longer than your inhale. Notice the weight of your body against the chair or floor.
- Recall a peak experience from your organizational life — a moment when you felt most alive, most effective, most connected to the purpose of your work. Let the memory come in full sensory detail: the room, the people, the sounds, the quality of light.
- Scan your body as the memory unfolds. Notice where you feel warmth. Notice where you feel expansion. Notice where muscles soften. Notice where energy rises. Take your time. There is no right answer — only your body's own report.
- Name the sensations silently or aloud: "Warmth in my chest." "Softening around my eyes." "Energy in my hands." "Openness in my throat." Be as specific as you can.
- Amplify the most prominent sensation by gently directing your attention toward it. Breathe into it. Let it expand slightly. Notice what happens when you give this sensation your full, kind attention.
- Ask the sensation: "What do you know about what matters here?" Wait patiently. Do not force an answer. Sometimes the body speaks in images, feelings, or single words rather than complete sentences.
- Rest for a moment in whatever you have discovered. Then gently return your attention to the room.
Debrief questions:
- What was the somatic signature of your peak experience?
- Did any sensation surprise you?
- What did you learn about your own body's relationship to appreciation?
- How might this exercise change the way you facilitate appreciative conversations?
Common Pitfalls
As we work with both the source model and its evolution, several pitfalls deserve attention:
Hagiography: Treating Cooperrider's work as sacred text rather than living theory. AI is strongest when it is practiced with the same generative spirit it advocates — always evolving, always asking better questions, never settling into dogma.
Dismissiveness: The opposite error — dismissing AI as naive positivity without understanding the sophisticated constructionist philosophy that grounds it. Critique without comprehension is not helpful.
Premature integration: Rushing to add somatic practices to AI without first deeply understanding the source model on its own terms. The body dimension extends AI; it does not replace it. The cognitive and narrative foundations remain essential.
False dichotomy: Setting up "traditional AI" and "embodied AI" as opponents rather than recognizing them as stages in an ongoing evolution. Cooperrider himself has been remarkably open to extension and development of the model.
Appropriation without attribution: Using AI concepts without honoring their origins. Cooperrider, Srivastva, Whitney, Trosten-Bloom, Stavros, and the many other scholars and practitioners who developed AI deserve full credit for their contributions.
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The Luminous Invitation
Appreciative Inquiry gave the world a profound gift: the understanding that organizations grow in the direction of their most persistent questions. The Luminous extension adds a complementary insight: organizations also grow in the direction of what their bodies practice.
The next chapters will develop this extension in detail — introducing the Embodied Appreciative Practice™ framework, the somatic dimensions of the Dream, Deepen, and Dissolve phases, and the assessment tools that make appreciative capacity measurable and developable.
But before we move on, let us pause in genuine gratitude for the source. Without Cooperrider's original insight — without his willingness to ask a different kind of question in a Cleveland clinic decades ago — none of what follows would be possible.
The body remembers what the mind forgets. And one of the things the body remembers is that the first appreciative question ever asked already changed the questioner's posture, breath, and heartbeat.
The somatic dimension was there from the beginning.
It was waiting to be named.
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Chapter Notes & Further Reading
- Cooperrider, D. L., & Srivastva, S. (1987). "Appreciative Inquiry in Organizational Life." Research in Organizational Change and Development, Vol. 1.
- Cooperrider, D. L., & Whitney, D. (2005). Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive Revolution in Change. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.
- Cooperrider, D. L., Whitney, D., & Stavros, J. M. (2008). The Appreciative Inquiry Handbook (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.
- Gergen, K. J. (1999). An Invitation to Social Construction. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
- Fredrickson, B. L. (2009). Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions. New York: Crown.
- Whitney, D., & Trosten-Bloom, A. (2010). The Power of Appreciative Inquiry (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.
- Bushe, G. R. (2011). "Appreciative Inquiry: Theory and Critique." In D. Boje, B. Burnes, & J. Hassard (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Organizational Change.
- Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-regulation. New York: W.W. Norton.
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