Case Assignment

For this assignment, first carefully review the required background materials. Make sure you remember the standard organizational development approaches covered in Module 1. Then make sure you understand the main principles of Appreciative Inquiry and how they compare to traditional organizational development approaches (action research, problem solving). It is also important to understand what is involved in each of the “4 Ds” – Discovery, Dream, Design, and Destiny.

When you are finished reviewing the background materials, go through each of the scenarios below and apply what you’ve read to these scenarios. For each scenario, cite at least one of the required readings to support your answer. You should cite at least three of the four required readings in your paper. Your paper should be 4–5  pages in length:

1. A bank has recently been losing money. Many borrowers have not been able to repay their loans. It is not clear why this has suddenly been a problem. Management is not sure if this is due to poor motivation of their loan officers who may not be doing careful credit checks on borrowers, or if it is due to other factors. But regardless of the source of the problem, the bank needs to fix this problem soon or otherwise they will go out of business. Time is of the essence for the bank to fix this problem. Should this team use an Appreciative Inquiry approach, or a more traditional Organizational Development approach? Explain your reasoning with references to the required readings.
2. A team of television screenplay writers have been working together for 10 years. For the first eight years their show had very high ratings, but over the last two years the ratings have started to slip and the network is thinking about canceling the show. The team used to get along with each other very well and agreed most of the time. But now the team has been fighting, blaming each other for the lower ratings, and having a lot of difficulty reaching agreement on what kind of stories or plots the show should have. Should this team use an Appreciative Inquiry approach, or a more traditional Organizational Development approach? Explain your reasoning with references to the required readings
3. A new start-up social networking company has recently received a lot of money from investors. The top management team consists of young but experienced employees who have worked at Facebook, Twitter, and similar companies. They are all highly motivated and get along well with each other. But in spite of their motivation, experience, and money from investors, they all agree things are not working as well as they should. They have only been working together for a few months but feel that something is missing in how they work together. They believe their functioning as a team could be improved but are not sure what exactly needs to be done. Should this team use an Appreciative Inquiry approach or a more traditional organizational development approach? Explain your reasoning with references to the required readings.
4. An organization hires an Appreciative Inquiry consultant to help the company get back on track and improve the performance of its product design team. The consultant starts by asking members of the team how they would like the team to perform and what their ideal vision of the team would be. The consultant collects all of this input and puts together a vision of how the team should perform and function. However, once this vision is presented to the team they are unable to come up with a plan to implement it. They all agree it would be great if they could achieve this vision, but they also are in consensus that this vision presented by the consultant is highly unrealistic. What do you think went wrong? What steps do you think the Appreciative Inquiry consultant could have taken to make the consulting process go better? Refer to the specific “4 Ds” of Appreciative Inquiry in your answer.

Module 4 - SLP

Appreciative Inquiry