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Question

The positive model is applied to planned change through an approach is called appreciative inquiry (AI). Which of the following is not the cyclical step of AI ?

This question was previously asked in
UGC NET 2025 Management Question Paper (07-Jan-2026) (Shift 1)
The correct answer is

Dedication

 Dedication is not a step of appreciative inquiry — option 4. The fourth D is Destiny.

What appreciative inquiry is. Developed by David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva at Case Western Reserve University in the 1980s, AI is the leading example of the positive model of planned change. Conventional organisation development is a deficit model: find the problem, diagnose the cause, fix it. AI inverts that. It asks what the organisation looks like when it is working at its best, and then seeks to extend those conditions — on the premise that organisations move in the direction of what they persistently ask questions about.

The 4-D cycle.

StepQuestion it asksWhat happens
1. Discovery“What gives life ?”Appreciating the best of what is — interviews and stories about peak experiences and successes
2. Dream“What might be ?”Envisioning what the organisation could become if the best were the norm
3. Design“What should be ?”Co-constructing the structures, processes and relationships that would realise the dream
4. Destiny“What will be ?”Sustaining — empowering people to act, learn and improvise towards it; sometimes called Deliver

Some formulations put a fifth D, Define, at the front, for choosing the affirmative topic.

Why option 4 is the trap. All four options begin with D, and “dedication” sounds like the kind of word such a model would use. The safeguard is to recall the function of the last step — making the change durable — and the word attached to it.

Where AI fits. It sits alongside Kurt Lewin’s three-step model of unfreeze, change and refreeze, and Kotter’s eight steps, as one of the standard approaches to planned organisational change; its distinctive contribution is the shift from problem-solving to strength-building, and the high degree of participation it requires.

Hence, the answer is Dedication.

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