Learning from Positive Cases

1. Learning from Positive Cases 2012 CEIT Conference Vicky Parker, Ed.M., D.B.A. School of Public Health

2. Why Is This an Innovation? • Using a case, based on experience or provided by the instructor, students assess the case focusing on what is going well in the situation. • Analysis is directed at identifying factors contributing to the positive outcomes observed, and identifying how to maintain the positive outcomes. • Approach contrasts with one in which students’ attention is directed to finding problems and recommending changes.

3. In Which Learning Environments Might This Innovation Fit? • Applied disciplines where case material is used, such as management, social work, public health, medicine, engineering, or education • Undergraduate or graduate courses • As an addition to cases more focused on problems • When trying to address a “bias for action”

4. Innovation Objectives • Focus attention on case aspects that are healthy, functional, useful and associated with good outcomes • Develop skills in appraising not only what does not work well, but also what does work well • Provide an alternative frame for considering change as something that is not necessarily always needed or good

5. Theoretical Roots of Approach • Positive… Organization … Scholarship • A lens that looks • critically and expansively on a range of positive outcomes associated with individual, group, organizational or system level phenomena, e.g., health system change • closely at positive explanatory mechanisms/patterns/meanings that contribute to our understanding of organizationally based phenomena • http://www.bus.umich.edu/Positive/

6. Appreciative Inquiry • systematic discovery of what gives “life” to a living system when it is most alive, most effective, and most constructively capable in economic, ecological, and human terms. • art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system’s capacity to apprehend, anticipate, and heighten positive potential • http://appreciativeinquiry.case.edu/intro/whatisai.cfm

7. Student Assignment • Identify a specific case, in either a current or former organization, that relates to human resources management. • (This can either be a case concerning an HR-related problem, or a case exemplifying an HR issue handled well.) • What does the literature suggest might be reasonable management interventions, if any are needed? • (If you have chosen a situation where things are working well, what is it that managers need to keep doing in order to maintain that state?) • (Consider other specific questions…)

8. In-class Activity • Think of an organizational situation in which engaged, thriving work was happening • Describe it briefly to your group members • Discuss and analyze what was being done right – to facilitate this engaged, thriving work – in each of your situations • Identify common themes across the situations

9. Benefits of This Approach • First do no harm – appreciate what is healthy before seeking to make changes • Students trained to find problems tend to find . . . • Does learning to identify & explain positive patterns offer some different tools? • Learning how to look for/build on “bright spots”? • Change as enhancing vs. replacing what already exists