Summary
On Organizational Learning by Chris Argyris (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, Inc., 1992)
The chapters in this book are a series of papers that were originally published in other locations.
Chapter 1: Discusses the defenses that individuals and organizations put up to resist double-loop learning. For individuals, an "easing-in" process to learning seems to help. In a conversation between a group (X) and an individual (Y), X would use questions and neutral statements to get Y to realize his errors. "This easing-in approach meant that Y would be asked questions by which, if correctly answered, he would discover what the "helpers" had been keeping secret in their diagnostic frames. As we shall see, if Y could answer these questions in the manner considered appropriate by the framers, he might not have acted toward X as he did. " (p. 16)
| [Error] | [Learning] | |
|---|---|---|
| Information is: | Vague | Concrete |
| Unclear | Clear | |
| Inconsistent | Consistent | |
| Incongruent | Congruent | |
| Scattered | Available |
"Double loop learning at the individual and organizational levels also involves the important issues of competence and justice. As we have seen, it is not just for individuals to define certain actions as incompetence and unjust, and then act as if the incompetence and injustice do not occur when they behave in the same way. Double-loop learning must also deal with undiscussability, the undiscussability of the undiscussable, and the puzzling fact that most individuals are unaware of their causal contribution to these organizational features, yet are aware of the causal contributions of others." ( p. 36)
Chapter 2: Organizational defensive routines:
1. ..."are taught through socialization."
2. ..."are taught as strategies to deal effectively with
threat or embarrassment."
3. ..."are supported by the culture of the organization."
4. ..."exist over time even though individuals"..."move
in and out of the organization." (P.41)
Chapter 3: Problems with current planning meetings: overall dissatisfaction with small group meetings, suppress individuality, issues become polarized into win-lose stances, bad news is censored before it gets to the top. (P. 66) Tension can be both productive and unproductive for an organization. "Productive tension is that tension that the individual can control and which comes from accepting new challenges, taking risks, expanding one's competencies, etc." ... "Thus the executive of the future will have to learn how to define internal environments that challenge people, stretch their aspirations realistically, and help them face interpersonal reality. Some examples are financial controls that reward people for risk-taking; organizational situations that are optimally undermanned; incentive systems that reward excellence (not average performance), work that is designed to use people's complex abilities." "... we need to develop competence in manipulating the environment but not the people." P. 77
Chapter 4: "Teaching Smart People How to Learn" - see previous summary.
Chapter 5: The discussion of case studies is a useful way to teach leaders about change. It is less threatening to talk about a case rather than one's own organization. Leaders often implement lessons learned in case discussions.
Chapter 6: Discusses the importance of a management information system that brings the manager close to the true information about a situation. One of the problems with current information systems is that they overgeneralize the data and hide the subtleties
Chapter 7: The human way of controlling embarrassment or threat:
"1. Bypass embarrassment or threat whenever possible.
2. Act as if you are not bypassing them.
3. Don't discuss 1 or 2 while it is happening.
4. Don't discuss the undiscussability of the undiscussable. "
(p.134)
Chapter 8: Think of people's current theory in use as Model I. To help people learn, a Model II strategy needs to be developed: "valid information, free and informed choice, and internal commitment to choices made in order to monitor the effectiveness of their implementation." (p. 153)
Chapter 9: Discusses financial accounting information in organizations and how it often becomes distorted.
Chapter 10: "...research has led to the tentative conclusion that budgets and budgeting can be related to at least four important human relations problems:
When this results in people getting hurt, the budget, in itself a neutral thing, often gets blamed." (P. 191)
There needs to be more employee participation in budget development.
Chapter 11: "Noise may be defined as distortion in the information being used. Psychologists studying the amount of noise in any system often differentiate between "hot" and "cold" variables that can affect the amount of this noise. Cold variables are related to cognitive processes, and hot variables are related to emotional or motivational factors" (p. 196) Intervention processes can be directed at reducing noise.
Chapter 12: Discusses a research project.
Chapter 13: Rules that the OD practitioner can use to overcome defensive reasoning are:
"Do not be too rational or too cognitive. Develop an intervention strategy that is consistent with your personal style of learning. Withdraw from dialogue with colleagues about substantive differences in your respective theories of practice if the conversation becomes too cognitive or requires that defenses be confronted. " ( 261)
Chapter 14: Discusses "personal growth laboratories" and states that they produce behavior counter productive to organizational learning. They focus on individualism rather than groups.
Chapter 15: Points out that this is a social science discipline and can not be subjected to the rigorous research of the physical sciences.
Chapter 16: Presents some questions for the industrial psychology field to research:
Chapter 17: Discusses attribution theory: "During the course of interaction, person A observes specific behaviors performed by person B. At the same time, person A has, from past experience, a storehouse of knowledge about behavior of people in general as well as personal knowledge.
In order to be able to comprehend all the discreet bits of data about behavior, A has some scheme of organization that allows him to chalk up many instances of behavior as similar in some sense and to store them all under one category. The category may take the form of a trait that he attributes to a person who performs these acts consistently." ( p. 356) ..." The attribution process is essentially a matching between observed behavior and categories or concepts supplied by the past experiences of the observer." (P. 356-357)
Chapter 18: Discusses the need for research on Model II behavior.
Chapter 19: " ...recent research provides many insights into how people make sense of their worlds in order to act. For example, they organize data into patterns, store these patterns in their heads, and then retrieve them whenever they need them. " (p. 393) ... "Humans probably use several methods to store these patterns. The one we will focus on here is called "maps for action." These maps represent the behaviors that people use to design and implement their actions. These maps are the key to healing us to understand and explain why human beings behave as they do, because they represent the problems or causal scripts that individuals use to inform their actions." ..."...these maps are constructions formulated by researchers, and, as such, they are hypotheses to be tested." (P. 394) "One way to help individuals change their easing-in actions is to help them generate a map for action that they probably use to generate such behavior." (P. 407)
Chapter 20: Discusses the Xerox case of organizational learning that was written about by Whyte, Greenwood and Lazes . No where does it give the citation for the paper! However, this chapter was originally printed in American Behavioral Scientist, 32,5,May-June, 1989. pp. 612-23.
Chapter 21: Discusses some problems that arise in research.
- prepared by Donna Silsbee