“Our Earthshot Moment: Net Positive OD for the Creation of a World of Full Spectrum Flourishing,” written by Weatherhead School of Management’s David Cooperrider, along with alumna Lindsey Godwin (GRS ’08, organizational behavior), has been chosen as one of the 18 best OD Review articles of all time to be featured in the new OD Review Essentials Volume 1: History & Evolution of Organization Development issue.
“There is a sense of tremendous privilege in this moment,” said Cooperrider, Char and Chuck Fowler Professor of Business as an Agent of World Benefit and professor of organizational behavior. “To have our article named by one of the top OD (organization development) journals as one of the field's top 18 articles ever––and then enshrined in a new book––is of course an honor.”
The seed for Cooperrider and Godwin’s article was planted the same day the vision for the Fowler Center For Business as an Agent of World Benefit was announced, nearly 20 years ago.
At the time, Godwin was a doctoral student at Weatherhead. Cooperrider, Godwin and a team of Weatherhead students, were invited by the former secretary general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, to facilitate what became the United Nations Summit between business leaders and the United Nations.
“We designed that meeting and facilitated it using our appreciative inquiry methodology and it built the largest business sustainability network in the world of over 16,000 corporations today,” said Cooperrider. “Our article traces all of this and redefines the purpose of the field of organization development.”
The article illustrates how industry-leading stars are fixing the world’s problems instead of creating them and how net-positive organization development is helping to bring their organizations alive in “mirror-flourishing” ways they’ve scarcely imagined.
A team of OD Review editors assessed over 2,500 articles published in OD Review issues between 1968 and 2022, and chose 18 articles to be featured in the special issue.
“We are confident that each of these texts offer high-quality insights that may be enjoyed by practitioners who wish to inform and deepen their practice, as well as scholars looking for ways to connect new theories with foundational perspectives,” the description of the new issue said.
Cooperrider and Godwin’s article originally appeared in the OD Review Special Issue: One Giant Leap: How Organization Development and Change Can Help Organizations, Industries, and World-changing Megacommunities Lead the Net-Positive Earthshot, which was edited by Cooperrider and Godwin and published in the spring of 2022.
“I am so proud of Weatherhead’s prolific alums and thought leaders, such as Professor Lindsey Godwin, my collaborating colleague over several decades. She is now a full-time professor and endowed chair at Champlain College,” Cooperrider said. “The fact is it’s an incredible time to be alive in this field.”