Customer Reviews

Knowledge for Action: A Guide to Overcoming Barriers to Organizational Change

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Argyris cuts to the heart of why organizations go wrong with a combination of passion and precision. Several authors who have written about effective teams and organizations such as Peter Senge and Gerald (Jerry) Weinberg regard Argyris's work quite highly, and rightly so. While other authors talk about and round the problems and issues, Argyris creates models which show not just what people do, but how they think. Other books in the field of Organizational Design that I have looked at appear dry as dust next to Argris. Readers should be cautioned, however, that Argyris is a academic and researcher -- reading his books requires work, but work well worth the effort. - Cortlandt Wilson, Software Consultan

Argyis' books are not an easy read. The same applies to this one. Being a researcher he invests a lot in trying to appear scientific. However, the material is still based on real-life examples, one specific example dealing with a group of executives who try to apply the principles of organizational learning to their new company.

Some of the ocnversations appear rather artificial in terms of the communication style and verbiage used. I have never heard anyone talk like that in real life.

The whole approach appears somewhat idealistic and hardly applicable to real life. That team of executives was only successful through coaching over a period of several years and because the whole group had committed to the experiment.

Try that on your own in a real-life office environment: good luck.
The approach may work, but only in the right (lab-like?) environment.

I must confess I do not have psychological background. From my humble point of view, all books like this, look at "the good and rational background" of people. They have the premise that all the staff is doing their best but "strange forces" makes them not to get the optimum for the organization. So, the goal is overcoming those refraining forces. I do believe that behavior of people is headed for their own rational interest which is not always the best for the company. In adition, we are looking for rationality in behavior which is only part of the truth. Is not envy, jealousy, narrow-minded, stuborness and so on, part of human being behavior?. without them, we only have part of the great picture and so, remedies will not work properly. Apart from that, the book is well organized and explains clearly the models the author is working with and the methodology used. Premises are strong and goals interested which lead to good results (provided human being were not as they are).