April 24, 2017

4:00-5:30 p.m.

Free and open to the public; reception to follow.

Michigan Ross Campus, Ross Building, 701 Tappan, Robertson Auditorium, Ann Arbor



David Cooperrider
University Distinguished Professor and Fairmount Santrol Professorship
Weatherhead School of Management
Case Western Reserve University
About the talk

Drawing from his forthcoming book, David Cooperrider, will explore the proposition that the quest for a flourishing earth is the most significant organization development opportunity (OD) of the 21st century. When people in organizations work toward building a more flourishing world, they are poised to thrive in ways that ignite innovation, leadership development, and inspired workplace performance. Cooperrider calls this dynamic “mirror flourishing.” He will show how the design of positive institutions—institutions that magnify and refract our highest human strengths outward into the world—is OD’s ultimate North Star. Cooperrider envisions a watershed moment in OD research and practice where our field moves from micro-OD to macro-OD, and then back again.

About Cooperrider

David L. Cooperrider, PhD is a University Distinguished Professor and holds the Fairmount Santrol – David L. Cooperrider Professorship in Appreciative Inquiry at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University, where he is the faculty founder of the Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit.

Cooperrider is best known for his original articulation of “AI” or Appreciative Inquiry with his mentor Suresh Srivastva. Today AI’s approach to strengths-inspired, instead of problematizing change, is being practiced everywhere: the corporate world, the world of public service, of economics, of education, of faith, of philanthropy, and social science scholarship—it is affecting them all. Jane Nelson, at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Leadership recently wrote, “David Cooperrider is one of the outstanding scholar-practitioners of our generation.”

Cooperrider has served as advisor to prominent leaders in business and society, including projects with five Presidents and/or Nobel Laureates such as William Jefferson Clinton, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Kofi Annan, and Jimmy Carter. David advises a wide variety of corporations including Apple, Johnson & Johnson, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Verizon, Hunter Douglas, Cleveland Clinic, National Grid, Smuckers, Clarke, Fairmount Minerals, McKinsey, Parker, Dealer Tire, and Wal-Mart as well as the Navy, Red Cross, United Way of America, and the United Nations. He is also a founding Board Member of the Taos Institute and the International Association of Positive Psychology.

He has published 25 books and authored over 100 articles and book chapters. He has served as editor of both the Journal of Corporate Citizenship with Ron Fry and the academic research series on Advances for Appreciative Inquiry (now with 4 volumes), with Michel Avital. In 2010 Cooperrider was honored with the Peter F. Drucker Distinguished Fellow award. His books include Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive Revolution in Change (with Diana Whitney); Organization Dimensions of Global Change (with Jane Dutton); Organizational Courage and Executive Wisdom (with Suresh Srivastva); and The Strengths-based Leadership Handbook (with Brun and Ejsing).

In the highest recognition, Champlain College’s Stiller School of Business honored David’s impact with an academic center in his name. Opened in 2014 it is called the “David L. Cooperrider Center for Appreciative Inquiry,” and David serves as its Honorary Chair. For the center’s dedication Professor Marty Seligman, the father of the positive psychology movement wrote: “David Cooperrider is a giant: a giant of discovery, a giant of dissemination, and a giant of generosity.”

Winter 2017 Positive Links Speaker Series host

Jane Dutton, co-founder of the Center for Positive Organizations; Robert L. Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Business Administration and Psychology

Sponsors

The Center for Positive Organizations thanks Learning & Professional DevelopmentSanger Leadership Center, StrykerTauber Institute for Global Operations, Samuel Zell & Robert H. Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies, and Diane and Paul Jones (MBA ‘75), for their support of the 2016-17 Positive Links Speaker Series.

All Positive Links events