The book “Overcoming Organizational Defenses: Facilitating Organizational Learning” is brilliant piece of work done by Chris Argyris. It is imperative for organizations to bring changes in terms of new processes, technology, business expansion, and expenditure reduction etc to deal with competitive environment. The book presents a detailed analysis of organizational defenses to resist changes and suggests the techniques to trounce those defenses. The book gives a deep insight on behavior of people who are very knowledgeable, experienced and good in defense. They tactically keep on repeating their errors.
Part One
The book is very interesting because it deals with actual problems that people face in the organizations. Sometimes we find ourselves in a situation where we feel that change is necessary but we resist facing it. We feel that change may be threatening for others and it may generate conflicts. The book provides a great understanding on how to deal with such situations and form a learning culture in the organizations. Another interesting thing I like about the topic is change; change is a way to sustain and remain in competition. There are various socio-economic, political, technological factors bringing changes to the business. If organization does not respond to these changes, it will be out of business. The book provides solutions to such issues and suggests how to remain competitive. The book stimulates positive emotion because it detailed out topic in-depth along with coverage of all the nitty-gritty related with change management and defensive approach of organizations towards it. The ideas, thoughts, tools, and techniques suggested in the book are supported with real examples along with works of other renowned scholars.
Part Two
Overall the book is very helpful and full of learning and the only problem that I noticed in the book is that it provides huge knowledge on the subject in limited pages. At few places I felt the need of more examples. At some places it is very difficult for people who never face such defensive situations to understand what writer is trying to convey.
Part Three
The book is divided in nine chapters, initial four chapter deal with the problems and elaborate why organizations use defensive mechanism, how skilled people are incompetent. The remaining five chapters provide solutions to the problems. Argyris has given three points to battle against defensive mechanism.
1. Management should evaluate the business development process. A good leader closely monitors that whether company is achieving its goal and mission or not. It is responsibility of the management to advice and correct actions of not only new employees but also experienced employees’ also.
2. Organization should not stick with old culture, knowledge and traditional process. Old goals, actions without knowing the results and unwelcomed criticism should be avoided.
3. Select Right people with new roles and defined responsibilities. Provide them financial support, adequate information system and rewards for risk taking ability.
The author suggested few models to deal with organizational defenses problems:
Model of Single Loop Learning – in this model we keep on adding or changing the actions till it match the desired results.
Model of Double Loop Learning – this model deals with not only changing the action but also regulating the administrative values. This model helps in getting right information, making right assumptions and understanding dynamics of actions. Instead of evaluating any solution superficially, we should do an in-depth analysis.
Bottom Line
Change is desired and necessary for success of any organization hence organizations should take all steps to avoid any defensive practice. Single loop and double loop learning models can be very helpful in protecting defensive practices.
Reference
Argyris, C. (Prentice Hall). Overcoming Organizational Defenses: Facilitating Organizational Learning. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
