On Organizational Learning

Chris Argyris is the James B. Conant Professor, Graduate School of Business, Harvard University. He is the author of thirty books and research monographs as well as numerous articles. Together with Cary Cooper, Professor Argyris is co-editor of The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Management. He is a consultant to many corporations, governmental organizations, and universities in Europe and the US.

• List of figures viiList of tables viiiAcknowledgements ixPreface xiiiIntroduction: The Evolving Field of Organizational Learning 1Part I Organizational Defenses1 Making Sense of Limited Learning 192 Tacit Knowledge and Management 543 Why Individuals and Organizations have Difficulty in Double-loop Learning 674 Crafting a Theory of Practice: The Case of Organizational Paradoxes 925 Today’s Problems with Tomorrow’s Organizations 1076 Teaching Smart People How to Learn 1277 A Leadership Dilemma: Skilled Incompetence 139Part II Inhibiting Organizational Learning and Effectiveness8 Organizational Learning and Management Information Systems 1519 Strategy Implementation: An Experiment in Learning 16410 How Strategy Professionals Deal with Threat: Individual and Organizational 17411 The Dilemma of Implementing Controls: The Case of Managerial Accounting 18612 Human Problems with Budgets 19613 Bridging Economics and Psychology: The Case of the Economic Theory of the Firm 214Part III The Counterproductive Consequences of Organizational Development and Human Resource Activities14 Good Communication that Blocks Learning 22915 Reasoning, Action Strategies, and Defensive Routines: The Case of OD Practitioners 23916 Inappropriate Defenses against the Monitoring of Organization Development Practice 26717 Do Personal Growth Laboratories Represent an Alternative Culture? 281Part IV The Inhibition of Valid and Usable Information from the Correct Use of Normal Science18 Actionable Knowledge: Design Causality in the Service of Consequential Theory 29719 Field Theory as a Basis for Scholarly Consulting 31020 Unrecognized Defenses of Scholars: Impact on Theory and Research 32321 Seeking Truth and Actionable Knowledge: How the Scientific Method Inhibits Both 33522 Problems and New Directions for Industrial Psychology 34323 The Incompleteness of Social-Psychological Theory: Examples from Small Group, Cognitive Consistency, and Attribution Research 37524 Dangers in Applying Results from Experimental Social Psychology 39525 Making Knowledge More Relevant to Practice: Maps for Action 41526 Participatory Action Research and Action Science Compared 43227 Some Unintended Consequences of Rigorous Research 440Index 454