David Cooperrider
David L. Cooperrider is a Professor in the Department of Organizational Behavior at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University. Professor Cooperrider is past President of the National Academy of Management’s OD Division and has lectured and taught at Stanford, University of Chicago, Katholieke University in Belgium, MIT, University of Michigan, Cambridge and others.
David has served as researcher and advisor to a wide variety of organizations including, for example, Yellow Roadway Corp., Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, McCann-Erickson, Nutrimental Foods, World Vision, Cleveland Clinic, American Red Cross, and United Way of America. Most of the projects are inspired by the Appreciative Inquiry (AI) methodology for which Professor Cooperrider is best known. His founding work in this area is creating a positive revolution in the leadership of change; it is helping companies all over the world discover the power of the strength-based approaches to planning and multi-stakeholder cooperation. Admiral Clark, the CNO of the Navy, for example recently met with David to bring AI into the Navy for a multiyear project on “Bold and Enlightened Naval Leadership”. And in June 2004 Cooperrider was asked by the United Nations Global Compact to design and facilitate a historic, unprecedented Summit meeting between Kofi Annan and 500 business leaders to “unite the strengths of markets with the authority of universal ideals to make globalization work for everyone”. Cooperrider’s work is especially important because of its ability to enable positive change in systems of very large and complex scale.
David often serves as meeting speaker and leader of large group, interactive conference events. His dynamic ideas have been published in journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly, Human Relations, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, The OD Practitioner, and in research series such as Advances in Strategic Management. More popularly, Professor Cooperrider’s work has been covered by The New York Times; Forbes Magazine; Science, Fast Company, Fortune, Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco Chronicle and others. He has been recipient of Best Paper of the Year Awards at the Academy of Management and top researcher of the year at Case and numerous clients have received awards for their work with Appreciative Inquiry. Among his highest honors David was invited to design a series of dialogues among 25 of the world's top religious leaders, started by His Holiness the Dalai Lama who said, "If only the world's religious leaders could just know each other, the world will be a better place." Using AI, the group has had meetings in Jerusalem and at the Carter Center with President Jimmy Carter in Atlanta. David was recognized in 2000 as among “the top ten visionaries” in the field by Training Magazine and in 2004 received a major award in Washington D.C. for “distinguished contribution” to the field of organizational learning from the American Society for Training and Development.
David has published nine books and authored close to 50 articles. Cooperrider’s volumes include Appreciative Inquiry Berrett-Kohler (with Diana Whitney); Organizational Courage and Executive Wisdom and Appreciative Leadership and Management (both with Suresh Srivastva). David is editor of a new academic book series Advances in Appreciative Inquiry (with Michel Avital) published by Elsevier Science. David’s wife Nancy is an artist and Hannah and Matt are in high school in Chagrin Falls Ohio with oldest son Daniel in college at University of Chicago.
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