Weatherhead School’s David Cooperrider honored as influential leader

cooperriderThe Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) honored David Cooperrider as one of its inaugural group of 100 influential leaders worldwide.

Cooperrider is the Fairmount Santrol – David L. Cooperrider Professor in Appreciative Inquiry in the Department of Organizational Behavior in the Weatherhead School of Management.

AACSB is a nonprofit organization of nearly 1,000 member institutions and businesses devoted to management education. At its annual Accreditation Conference in Chicago Tuesday, Sept. 22, AACSB announced the 100 influential leaders representing more than 20 industry sectors in 48 countries. The honorees were selected from the organization’s first “Influential Leaders from AACSB Business Schools Challenge.”

Cooperrider is founder and faculty chair of the Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit at the Weatherhead School. He is most widely known for pioneering and advancing Appreciative Inquiry (AI), a method of organizational behavior that focuses on the discovery and design of positive institutions. AI is credited with helping to create the field of positive psychology and the strengths revolution in management.

In 2012, guided by Cooperrider’s vision, the Fowler Center launched a major world inquiry project to identify businesses that are agents of world benefit. The Flourish Prizes for Business as an Agent of World Benefit is a student-driven initiative at management schools globally using the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. Those business stories will become nominations for the inaugural Flourish Prizes, to be awarded in June 2017. Learn more at AIM2Flourish.com.