Shadow as Dialectic: An Appreciative Inquiry Response Repertoire to “Negative” Discourse

This interpretive study investigates one of the most established positive methodologies in organizational change, Appreciative inquiry, and its ability to address employee concerns. Interviews with 41 organizational development practitioners, with more than 600 cumulative years of experience across public, private, and nonprofit sectors, demonstrate Appreciative inquiry, practiced with fidelity to its principles, rarely suppressed so-called negative discourse, previously conceptualized as the shadow. The study reimagines shadow as dialectic tensions that occur when employees in change processes showed resistance to positive discourse. Practitioners encountered three patterned dialectics: the voice shadow holds the tension between free expression and limited expression; the leadership shadow pertains to opposing needs regarding hierarchical-collaborative decision making; and the temporal shadow names tensions between short-term and long-term change. These tensions are navigated through a repertoire of communicative practices and the central principles that constitute them, including counternarratives, variations of reframing, shuttle facilitation, and transparency. This repertoire extends a communicative theoretical framework of response choices when encountering negative discourse in Ai and other positive organizational change practice.