Ralph Douglas Stacey (born 10 September 1942 in Johannesburg) is a British organizational theorist and Professor of Management at Hertfordshire Business School, University of Hertfordshire, in the UK and one of the pioneers of enquiring into the implications of the natural sciences of complexity for understanding human organisations and their management. He is best known for his writings on the theory of organisations as complex responsive processes of relating.

Kenneth J. Gergen (born 1935) is an American social psychologist and emeritus professor at Swarthmore College. He obtained his Bachelor of Arts from Yale University (1957) and his PhD from Duke University (1962).

David Cooperrider (born July 14, 1954), is the Fairmount Minerals Chair and Professor of Social Entrepreneurship at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University, and Faculty Director at the Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit at Case. He also teaches at University of Pennsylvania as well as Claremont University, where he is The Peter F. Drucker Distinguished Fellow.

Cooperrider is recognized as the founder, together with Suresh Srivastva, of the theory of Appreciative Inquiry. Cooperrider's original doctoral dissertation "Appreciative Inquiry Into Organizational Life" has been cited in numerous books as “the first, and as yet, the best articulation of the theory and vision of appreciative inquiry.” It was completed and defended in 1985.