The Strategic Role of Appreciative Inquiry and Affectivity in Overcoming Epistemic Vices in Knowledge Creation. Avon Mexico Case Study.

Abstract

A company that doesn’t create knowledge is a company that will not grow. It means that knowledge creation in organizations is the fulcrum of a company that wants to be innovative, competitive, and profitable. But knowledge creation is not just a cold problem-solving activity. It is the result of cooperation, practice, and discipline. Many authors realized that understanding how knowledge within an organization is created is fundamental to be able to manage it to grow and reach all the set goals. The goal of my thesis is precisely to underline how the creation of knowledge is fundamental to business purposes. Furthermore, I will focus my attention on a method that is gaining ground among companies, Appreciative Inquiry. I will demonstrate how AI can be used to create and disseminate knowledge, increase collaboration and inclusion, projecting companies to the future with a dynamic and open to change perspective, all this following a different path from the deficit-based we are used to. Inclusion, collaboration, and openness to change become strategic. To spell out these strategies, I will present an analysis of a specific case study: Avon Mexico. This company used AI to overcome obstacles to growth and increase power and popularity among the competitors and clients. Furthermore, the use of appreciative inquiry enabled the company to bring out the virtues and overcome two strongly present epistemological vices: Injustice, and Arrogance or Privilege not to Know. Using the case study, I will show the importance of identifying and overcome these vices and the importance of supporting virtues. In addition to that, I argue that affectivity can play an important role in defining the presence of vices and virtues in organization. Emotions can create and sustain an environment in which subjects are encouraged to improve, an environment that promotes cooperation and supports a continuous and flourishing exchange of opinions and ideas. Can these alternative methods, less focused on rational and static results like the one we are used to leads to economic growth? My thesis aims to demonstrate the existence of this possibility, by proposing strategies of knowledge creation in organizations based on appreciative inquiry, affectivity, and virtue epistemology. The goal is to demonstrate how these unconventional processes can lead to growth in terms of well-being, financial return, and productivity.