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Reasons and Rationalizations
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Reasons and Rationalizations

The Limits to Organizational Knowledge

Chris Argyris
Oxford UP, 2004

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Editorial Rating

6

Qualities

  • Innovative

Recommendation

Management scholar Chris Argyris tackles an important problem: the pervasiveness of defensive reasoning that prevents people in organizations from understanding when and why they are skillfully incompetent. Unfortunately, he employs such an academic style that his arguments are primarily useful to fellow scholars, although they would be relevant to managers if they were offered more accessibly. The professor assumes that readers are familiar with social science literature, processes, issues and vocabulary. For those who seek solutions to the organizational problem of defensive reasoning, he offers enlightening explanatory theories, but not much practical advice. That said, it is comforting to note that someone has looked seriously at the disconnection between what executives say and what they do. Argyris catalogues the dimensions of this dysfunction and proposes - although not very concretely - that it may be open to some correction, perhaps through such tools as double-loop learning and "left hand/right hand" analysis. getAbstract.com suggests this book to experts in organizational behavior, corporate culture and issues in scholarship about management.

Summary

Defensive Reasoning

Organizations suffer when their leaders engage in defensive reasoning because:

  • Instead of focusing on a productive solution to a problem, defensive reasoning focuses on protecting an individual or a group.
  • It uses self-referential logic that is unquestionable even when it is wrong.
  • It is not transparent.
  • It is deceptive, but it prevents discussion of the deceptions.
  • It leads to misunderstanding, errors and barriers to learning.

Although people in an organization may be aware that defensive reasoning is occurring, they are often so caught up in it that they are not able to take steps to correct it. Very often, people believe that if they challenge defensive reasoning, the organization will descend into chaos. People trapped in the defensive reasoning process become victims of their own defensive routines, and feel victimized by forces beyond their control. It often takes a crisis to expose defensive reasoning. The collapse of Enron and Arthur Andersen, the Challenger space shuttle disaster, the Catholic Church’s priest scandal and the intelligence failures that facilitated the 9/11 attacks are all ...

About the Author

Chris Argyris received his Ph.D. in organizational behavior from Cornell University in 1951 and taught at Yale University for 20 years before becoming Conant Professor of Education and Organizational Behavior at Harvard University. He has written 33 books and monographs and more than 400 articles, and has received eleven honorary degrees.

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