David L. Cooperrider is Professor and Chairman of 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 at Harvard, Stanford, University of Chicago, Katholieke University in Belgium, MIT, University of Michigan, Cambridge and others. Currently David serves as Faculty Director of the Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit, a new “school within the school” focused on business and society leadership, at the Weatherhead School of Management.
David has served as researcher and advisor in the arena of sustainable development 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 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 the transformation toward sustainable value in systems of very large and complex scale.
David’s often serves as meeting speaker and leader of large group, interactive conference events. His dynamic ideas on sustainable development and appreciative inquiry have been published in journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly, Human Relations, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Management Inquiry, 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, Biz Ed and others. He has been recipient of Best Paper of the Year Awards at the Academy of Management and top researcher and best teacher awards at Case. Numerous clients have likewise 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 held meetings in Jerusalem and at the Carter Center with President Jimmy Carter. 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 13 books and authored over 60 articles and chapters. Cooperrider’s volumes include the best selling Appreciative Inquiry published by Berrett-Kohler (with Diana Whitney); The Organizational Dimensions of Global Change (with Jane Dutton); Organizational Wisdom and Executive Courage and Appreciative Management and Leadership (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. His son Daniel is a philosophy of religion major at University of Chicago, and Hannah and Matt have just finished high school in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. To read more about David Cooperrider, visit his personal site.
