On organizational learning
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
On organizational learning
Blackwell, 1994, c1992
- : pbk
Available at 32 libraries
Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
"Blackwell Business"
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Draws together the seminal work on organizational learning done over many years by Chris Argyris to give a complete picture of his contribution in the field. This book should be useful to anyone interested in understanding how organizations work, evolve and learn. The themes of how organizations learn and how organizational politics function define the continuing importance and relevance of the key issues which the pieces in the book address. Topics covered include: organizational learning and action science; organizational effectiveness, and what inhibits it; organizational development and human resource activities; and usable knowledge and how it is inhibited. The author's focus on the defensive and protective processes which block organizations from learning has opened them up to a new form of scrutiny, and demonstrates the liberating alternatives created by scientific investigation.
Table of Contents
PART I: Organizational Defences 1. Why Individuals and Organizations have Difficulty in Double-Loop Learning 2. Crafting a Theory of Practice 3. Today's Problems with Tomorrow's Organizations 4. Teaching Smart People to Learn. Part II: Inhibiting Organizational Learning and Effectiveness 1. MIS: The Challenge to Rationality and Emotionality 2. Strategy Implementation: An Experiment in Learning 3. How Strategy Professionals Deal with Threat 4. The Dilemma of Implementing Control 5. Human Problems with Budgets 6. Bridging Economics and Psychology: The Case of the Economic Theory of the Firm. Part III: The Counterproductive Consequences of Organizational Development and Human Resource Activities 1. Reasoning, Action Strategies and Defensive Routines 2. On Monitoring Practice 3. Do Personal Growth Laboratories Represent an Alternative Culture? Part IV: The Inhibition of Valid and Usable Information from the Correct Use of Normal Science 1. Seeking Truth and Actionable Knowledge 2. Problems and New Directions for Industrial Psychology 3. The Incompleteness of Social Psychology Theory 4. Dangers in Applying Results from Experimental Social Psychology 5. Making Knowledge more Relevant to Practice 6. Participant Action Research and Action Science 7. The Unintended Consequences of Rigorous Research.
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