ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates the five Reflexive inquiry (RI) principles that can be employed in specific, local, situated moments and episodes of organizational practice. These principles are systemic, constructionist, critical, appreciative, and complex. Each principle offers a contribution to RI by emphasizing a particular dimension of reflexive practice. RI rests on the assumption that consciousness about the patterns of feeling are experiencing in a relational system is central to effective organizational development. In RI the proposal is to create a relational context of shared humanity, sensitive to the vulnerability of both self and other and empathetic to the conditions of life that the other is invited or pressured into, by oneself. RI also encourages an appreciation that consultants' interpretations are partial, contextual, and unstable. In managing and facilitating critical consciousness an RI orientation will encourage us to appreciate that all action is meaningful and that consultants' individual and collective histories and purposes give logic to consultants' actions.
