Action Research Action Learning and Process Management Assoc. Inc. 

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A L A R P M  Conference Abstracts

Action for a Better World   
Practitioner Development Conference
St. John's College University of Queensland,
Brisbane, Australia, 13 - 14 July, 1997

 
How can we be collaborative without being defensive?

Denis Cowan, Elisabeth Wilson-Evered and Shankar Sankaran --
Elogue Pty Ltd

An 'action learning' workshop to reflect upon organisational defensive patterns and strategies to overcome them.

 

According to Chris Argyris all organisations - private or public exhibit at various times:

  • skilled incompetence
  • organisational defensive routines
  • organisational fancy footwork

These organisational defensive patterns or ODPs inhibit organisational performance affecting the welfare of the very people who create these patterns in the first place.

According to Argyris these defensive patterns arise when people in organisations try to cope with either embarrassment or threat. He says that organisations are not responsible for creating these patterns but individuals are, due to the social values that they learn in their early life.

How do organisations and individuals cope with the embarrassment or frustration created by these defensive patterns?

1.  Management builds structures and policies to reduce the causes that lead to these patterns.

 2.  People learn, over a period of time, to skilfully dodge organisational minefields.

 3.  People get desensitised over time and withdraw or distance themselves from embarrassment or threat.

 4.  People leave or take early retirement.

 5.  People blow up at individual levels and get burned out

But these strategies do not improve organisational performance but render the organisation to be a mediocre one when it could have been very successful. What can we do to improve the situation then?

As per Argyris two fundamental strategies can be implemented simultaneously to reduce these organisational defensive patterns.

1.  Design and manage organisations to prevent activation of the defensive patterns in the first place by empowering the people through

  • redesign of work
  • forming autonomous groups and
  • using new theories of employee involvement.

2.  Enhancing organisational learning by

  • helping individuals learn new concepts and skills to counteract organisational defensive patterns and
  • to reduce them through making the reasons leading to these patterns discussable and manageable.

Argyris recommends that organisations should begin the first strategy at lower levels and the second strategy at upper levels of an organisation.

The workshop will be divided into three parts:

Part 1 - Brief explanation of ideas expressed by Argyris regarding organisational defensive patterns and strategies to over come them.

Part 2 - An action learning session by the participants in small groups to discuss both the patterns and the strategies to overcome defensive routines.

Part 3 - Presenting the reflections recorded at the group sessions, compiling them together and presenting them as the outcomes of this workshop to be published by ALARPM.

The workshop will be collaboratively conducted by Denis Cowan, Elisabeth Wilson-Evered and Shankar Sankaran from Elogue Pty. Ltd. an organisation committed to help people realise their potential.

Argyris, Chris (1990), Overcoming Organisational Defenses - Facilitating Organisational Learning, Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

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PO Box 1748
Toowong   Qld   4066

Phone:  617 3870 9812
Fax:        617 3870 4013
Email:   alarpm@mailbox.uq.edu.au
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