Chris Argyris (July 16, 1923 – November 16, 2013)

 An American business theorist

 A professor of industrial administration at Yale and in 1968, moved to Harvard Business School where he
later became known as James Bryant Conant, and also a professor of education and organizational
behavior.
 He made a significant contribution to the development of our appreciation of organizational learning.
 Firstly, he was a behavioral scientist, but then he developed an interest on how people learn. He then
earned a place in the forefront of that discipline with a career, he then devoted himself to understand
how organizational behave and how managers learn.
 In his early research he explored the impact of formal organizational structures, control systems and
management on individuals and how they responded and adapted to them.

In Chris Argyris’ Management Theory:

He explored the concept of organizational learning and its impact on a company's growth, effectiveness and
adaptability.
Argyris's theories solely focused on single- and double-loop learning, the immaturity/maturity continuum,
organizational communication and the effects of each of these on employee motivation, accountability and
empowerment.

EMPLOYEE PARTICIPATION
 Managerial domination causes workers to become discouraged and passive – or inactive in
organizational activities.
 This theory states that if the self-esteem and independent needs of the employees or members of an
organization or company are not met, they will become discouraged and troublesome in participating in
any of the activities or they may leave the organization.

- This means that should be an open communication within an organizations, which is normally
considered a good thing, but it also can block learning and hinder progress if it's based on
defensiveness, denial of real problems, inability to face tough issues and refusal to examine one's
own attitudes and contributions to the problem.

The double- and single-loop learning is the main basis for Argyris’ work:

1. Double-loop learning:
 This occurs when an error is detected and corrected in ways that involve the modification of an
organization’s underlying norms, policies and objectives. Double loop learning uses feedback
from past actions to question assumptions underlying current views.
2. Single-loop learning
 In this, learning involves the detection and correction of the error. Where something goes
wrong, it is suggested that an initial port of call for many people is to look for another strategy
that will address and work within the governing variables.
 Here, goals, values, plans, and rules are assumed and accepted rather than questioned.

For short: This hypothesized that learning is composed of finding an error (which is the double-loop learning)
and creating a way to solve/correct the error (which is the single-loop learning).

As for the immaturity/maturity continuum, the Chris Argyris theory states that successful employee
empowerment requires management to provide opportunities for personal growth in the same 7 areas in which
children must mature as they approach adulthood. Along the immaturity/maturity continuum, employees must
move from:
1. First, individuals move from a passive state as infants to a state of increasing activity as adults.
2. Second, individuals develop from a state of dependency upon others as infants to a state of relative
independence as adults.
3. Individuals behave in only a few ways as infants, but as adults they are capable of behaving in many
ways.
4. Individuals have erratic, casual, and shallow interests as infants but develop deeper and stronger
interests as adults
5. The time perspective of children is very short, involving only the present, but as they mature, their time
perspective increases to include the past and the future.
6. Individuals as infants are subordinate to everyone, but they move to equal or superior positions with
others as adults.
7. As children, individuals lack an awareness of “self”, but as adults they are not only aware of, but they are
able to control “self”.
1. Passivity to activity;

2. Dependence to
independence;

3. Few behaviors to many

behaviors;

4. Shallow interests to deep

interests;

5. Short-term perspective to
long-term perspective;

6. Subordination to equality or
superiority

7. Non self-awareness to self-

awareness/self-control.