Reasoning, Learning, and Action: Individual and Organizational

by Chris Argyris

A three-pronged approach to overcoming mediocrity, presented by one of the nation's top business theorist. Replete with case examples, this book details how employee reasoning, learning and action--properly developed--can counteract the self-defeating behavior affecting many organizations.

Genres: Business

500 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1982

About the author

Chris Argyris is a director of elite strategy consulting firm, the Monitor Group, and is the James Bryant Conant Professor of Education and Organizational Behavior at Harvard Business School.

Agyris's early research focused on the unintended consequences for individuals of formal organizational structures, executive leadership, control systems, and management information systems, and on how individuals adapted to change those consequences. He then turned his attention to ways of changing organizations, especially the behavior of executives at the upper levels of organization.

During the past decade, Argyris has been developing, a theory of individual and organizational learning in which human reasoning (not just behavior) becomes the basis for diagnosis and action.