Background
A US organizational psychologist. He was Professor of Industrial Administration at Yale University and worked as a consultant in industry, for customers including IBM, Shell and Du Pont, as well as for various departments of the US government and for governments in Europe. He is linked with Harvard University and has been James Bryant Conant Professor of Educational and Organizational Behaviour there.
Thinking
Argyris's area is the personal development of individuals within organisations, and the defence mechanisms that managers often use unconsciously to resist change.
Argyris's voew of the individual is that each person has a potential that can be developed - or stifled - by the organisation and the particular group circumstances in which they operate. He argues that developing a person's full potential should be to the benefit of both the individual and the organisation, but managers and even peer groups within the organization often lack the 'interpersonal confidence' to allow this to happen. Rather than this altruistic attitude, managers in particular can exhibit defensive mechanisms to protect their control over others.
In an article for Harvard Business Review, Argyris studied six companies and observed 265 decision-making meetings. He found that executive behaviour often creates an atmosphere of distrust and inflexibility, despite the fact that the executives involved genuinely believe trust and innovation to be crucial to good decision-making.
Argyris noted that such discrepancies were not restricted to business organisations. He had obtained similar patterns of behaviour from leaders in other sectors including education, research, the church, trade unions and government.
His suggested solution was for executives to try asking important 'feedback' questions, at quiet, non-pressurised opportunities, discussing recordings of their own meetings and actively entering a learning process about their own behaviour and that of their group.
He identified three basic values that affected his study groups:
- "The significant human relationships are the ones which have to do with achieving the organisation's objective". In other words, executives concentrated their efforts on 'getting the job done', often using this as an excuse to avoid probing into workers' interpersonal factors and how groups were functioning.
- "Cognitive rationality is to be emphasised; feelings and emotions are to be played down". In other words, interpersonal relations are viewed as being irrelevant.
- "Human relationships are most effectively influenced through unilateral direction, coercion and control, as well as by rewards and penalties that sanction all three values". Direction and control are accepted as an inevitable part of the management hierarchy.
This awareness of how senior managers were behaving was summed up by Argyris: "During the study of the decision-making processes of the president and the nine vice-presidents of a firm with nearly 3,000 employees, I concluded that the members unknowingly behaved in such a way as not to encourage risk-taking, openness, expression of feelings and cohesive, trusting relationships". In later interviews, the executives claimed that negative feelings were not expressed because "we trust each other and respect each other". The reasons why issues of conflict were ignored at meetings included such explanations as: "we should not air our dirty linen in front of people who may come in to make a presentation", and "when people are emotional, they are not rational".
A similar pattern of emerged from studies of executives' relationships with middle managers, most of the latter feeling that they did not know where they stood with their bosses and that conflict was rarely addressed. "One key to group and organisational effectiveness is to get this knowledge (that a group was decaying) out into the open and to discuss it thoroughly. The human 'motors' of the group and the organisation have to be checked periodically, just as does the motor of an automobile. Without proper maintenance, all will fail". (Harvard Business Review. Mar/Apr 1966, 'Interpersonal Barriers to Decision-Making'.)
Argyris worked with Donald Schon to look at how organisations cope with the contradictory goals of maintaining a stable status quo and adapting to change. Their solutions appeared in 'Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective'. How are staff expected to reconcile seemingly contradictory ideals such as: take initiatives but keep to the rules; think ahead but remember that pay is linked to present performance; co-operate with others but be ready to compete with them?
Argyris and Schon produced what they call Model I to demonstrate how managers resolve these contradictions. What they do is to concentrate on setting goals as an individual; on being as self-contained as possible; on keeping negative feelings to themselves and on discouraging others from speaking their minds about matters that worry them. In this way they hope to protect their own positions and to deflect issues that could build up in other people. The primary aim of Model I managers is to defend themselves and their positions from change while imposing change where necessary on others. Where Model 1 managers fail is in creating an environment of mistrust and repression. The process is self-perpetuating because such managers learn nothing except the importance of maintaining the status quo. This is described by Argyris as 'single-loop' learning. The prescription he and Schon developed for Model II management promoted 'double-loop' learning. In double-loop learning, the manager acts on information, encourages free discussion and is prepared to change. Double-loop learning involves learning from others rather than from one's own experience.
To move managers from Model I to Model II thinking, Argyris advises a training programme for managers using interpersonal consultants. He is however aware of the difficulties involved in making this change. In 'Strategy, Change and Defensive Routines', he says "Top management believes that to change defensive routines is the equivalent of changing the world, a belief that I share with them. They conclude that the most realistic solution is to bypass them". Argyris says that organisations can perform well in spite of the defensive mechanisms operating within them. This is partly because of the positive sides of Model I managers that they are frequently loyal, hard-working and dedicated. Argyris suggests that the best advice in tackling defensive mechanisms is "to move slowly and iteratively. Let the organisation learn from each experiment so it can make the next one even more successful and build up organisational intelligence on these change processes that can be disseminated throughout the organisation".
Defensive mechanisms are one good reason why changing the existing culture in organisations is rarely more than ephemeral. In Argyris' view, "defensive routines pollute the system and undermine it the same way air pollution undermines our lives".
Further research
Argyris, C (1957) Personality and Organization, New York
Argyris, C (1965) Organization and Innovation, Toronto
Argyris, C and Schon, D A (1978) Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective, Wokingham
Argyris, C. (1985) Strategy, Change and Defensive Routines, London
