Sustaining Family Businesses in India

In this chapter, the authors intend to present appreciative inquiry in the context of family-run businesses (FRBs). The challenges of family-run businesses are in addition to challenges faced by non-family businesses. The context in which appreciative inquiry may be applied in family-run businesses may range from succession, remuneration, performance assessments, retirement planning, or transforming traditional business to scale up. In any kind of change initiative, the principles of appreciative inquiry may be applied. The chapter presents the typical challenges of family-run businesses, scope of appreciative inquiry in family businesses, and prior work and a case to understand application of appreciative inquiry in family-run businesses.

Effect of an Emotional Intelligence Intervention Program on Coping Strategies Among Government School Teachers

Teaching is regarded to be among the careers in which employees are subjected to high levels of stress. Teacher stress is a complex and enduring problem. Hence, it is highly crucial that teachers learn ways of coping or managing with stressors inherent in teaching. Studies have shown that emotionally intelligent individuals can cope better with the challenges of life and control their emotions more efficiently than those who cannot. Thus, the present study aimed at developing an emotional intelligence intervention program and assessing its effect on the coping strategies among schoolteachers. Simple random sampling technique was adopted to select 47 teachers (25 women and 22 men) working in government schools in Erode district as sample for the study. An emotional intelligence intervention program that was tailor-made by the researcher was implemented on the experimental group. Results revealed that the emotional intelligence intervention program was very effective in helping teachers use effective coping strategies to combat stress.

Appreciative Inquiry as a Potential Tool to Nurture Creativity

Appreciative inquiry is an act of nurturing a group of people in a system to move into positive futures through relationship development and generative learning. The culture of a healthy institution is formed through shared values and beliefs. Appreciative inquiry gives people the experience of personal and collective power, a sense of liberation, and freedom. It enhances self-esteem and self-expression which leads to self-organization. Freedom comes with responsibilities and self-organization. Self-organizing systems take care of power inequality, balance resources, and optimize when required. Appreciative learning is the art of valuing and inquiring those possibilities that can create something profoundly new. Any innovative organization goes beyond the perceived constraints and focuses on opportunities around and evaluates internal strengths and strategises their moves. Appreciative inquiry nurtures creative and innovative thinking by fostering a positive focus.

Appreciative Inquiry and Graduate Students' Professional Development

This chapter focuses on the use of appreciative inquiry in higher education and community contexts, providing an extensive review of this literature. Furthermore, the chapter describes how appreciative inquiry has been applied within the Community Engagement Program at Merrimack College. Jointly written by the program director, a graduate student, and an adjunct instructor, the chapter includes all three voices and perspectives. It includes lessons learned that may be generalizable to business and organizational contexts.

Engaging Employees With Positivity

This chapter attempts to find the role of appreciative inquiry in employee engagement and organizational transformation. An attempt has been made to explain the impact of appreciative inquiry on employee engagement, which eventually helps in organizational transformation with minimal hindrances. Employee engagement has turned into an undeniably conspicuous issue in the region of organizational development (OD) likely because of the developing collection of research encompassing the positive connection between employee engagement and organizational development, which also comprises profit margin. Appreciative inquiry is a vision-based approach of open dialogue that is designed to help organizations and their partners create a shared vision for the future and a mission to operate in the present. The main thrust area of appreciative inquiry is to find out what works best for the organization. Instead of focusing on negativity, appreciative inquiry focuses on the positive aspect of the organization.

Discovering the Root Causes of Success

Inspired from the movement of positive psychology, appreciative inquiry (AI) contributed immensely and continues to do so in organisational development (OD) from every aspect. As it is driven by the strength-based possibility-focused thinking approach, rather than the deficit thinking approach of problem solving inquiry method, appreciative inquiry helps in creating an overall positive environment in the organisation (practice of positive OD). The scope of appreciative inquiry, thus, is not only limited to organisational problem diagnosis and therapeutic realm, but has also spread out its wings in communication and relation building, change management, development programmes, and many more. This chapter, hence, has tried to emphasise and briefly discuss appreciative inquiry's vast scope, contribution, and positive approach in the sphere of organisational development.

Knowledge Management Strategy and Practices Using the Appreciative Inquiry Approach for Organizational Transformation

Knowledge management itself is a complex activity related to building organizational capabilities to integrate various forms of interactive technology with critical social, cultural, and organizational issues of knowledge workers. This becomes the core of all aspects of KM—knowledge creation, sharing, transformation, and retention—in the organization. Development of an effective KM strategy via adopting the appreciative inquiry approach can decide on the future of the robustness of organizations, organizational transformation, and eventually enhances the scope of competitive advantage. This chapter will incorporate the tenets of KM and ancillary practices, theory of organizations, though the lens of appreciative inquiry approach and the way an organization's structural transformation can be influenced by strategic management of knowledge within the organization. It will concurrently demonstrate the index of strategic influence within the overall organizational network.

Probing Into the Journey of Appreciative Inquiry Towards Organizational Development

The simple assumption of appreciate inquiry is that organizations all around the globe have something that works well, which becomes their point of initiation for generating positive vibration. Appreciate inquiry promotes learning, innovation, and understanding in organization arrangement and process. Appreciate inquiry refers to finding a holistic knowledge base, team building actions designed to achieve the vision of the organization and society as a whole, and appreciating is an art of valuing those elements that generates a positive environment in a group or organization. The process involved in AI includes storytelling and interviewing to dig the best of the past and discovering what one wants.

Health and Wellbeing as Appreciative Inquiry in a Private University in Mexico

Appreciative inquiry (AI) has been used to promote positive change in different areas of organizational life. It is based on the 4D cycle which includes four distinct stages: discover, dream, design, and destiny. Organizational wellbeing is both a strategy and a responsibility, especially in recent times, when the line between work and life seems to be blurring, and there has been an increased concern about the role that work plays in the health and wellbeing of employees. AI is substantially different from other institutional analysis methodologies because it is not focused on solving problems, but on the positive aspects of organizational life and culture. This chapter presents the case of a private university in Puebla, Mexico, which has been promoting holistic programs to improve employees' wellbeing and happiness, reducing stress and other potential health problems through appreciative inquiry on what members dream, long for, and aspire in terms of better overall health. It is a descriptive study that presents a specific case.

Tapping the Positive Organizational Potential Through Appreciative Leadership

This chapter brings to the readers a crisp understanding of what appreciative inquiry (AI) is all about in terms of envisioning an effective organization towards sustainability. The chapter journeys through different phases of AI and explains organizational transformations as living systems, energetic and entrenched endeavours of ever-widening webs of unlimited strength and boundless human imagination, can develop into a desired organization. It highlights that HR practices need to focus on the eternal faith upon the dream of a fully functioning organization and focus on how leadership has a role and outcome with respect to appreciative inquiry. Touching upon team effectiveness through AI and how co-owning and co-creating organizational effectiveness is achieved, the chapter also touches upon briefly the required skills of a AI practitioners who lead the change. Finally, it elucidates how AI is used within an evaluation context. The chapter is an attempt to give a crisp message as to how to tap the positive organizational potential by emphasizing the role of appreciative leadership.