Appreciative inquiry (AI) is a process that improves employee and organizational development by focusing on the organization’s strengths and positive opportunities. AI assumes that there is already something effective and useful in every organization and is thus the exact opposite of the traditional problem-solving approach. AI is extremely useful in promoting organizational change and is also very often used to create higher employee engagement. Due to the rare use of AI in Slovenia, the study aims to present AI in depth through theoretical and practical aspects and to demonstrate the influence of using AI to employee work engagement. We employed a qualitative and quantitative approach, combining the use of semi-structured interviews with the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES). The study involved 59 participants from a selected manufacturing company, who were divided into an experimental and control group. The latter was not included in the AI process. We measured the work engagement of all participants with two measurements over two different time periods. We also used AI, which involved 13 participants from the experimental group. They reported an extremely positive and effective experience that fostered a shift in thinking, increased openness to change, and closer collaboration between employees. In our sample, we did not find an interaction between the group and the measurement and thus we cannot generalize to the population that the improvement in work engagement in the experimental group would be greater than the improvement in the control group. Although the results showed that the participants in the experimental group express higher work engagement at the second measurement than at the first compared to the control group, where the differences between the measurements were minimal. This indicates the AI’s effectiveness in organizations that are facing changes. AI can also help explore different psychological concepts, including employee engagement.
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