TITLE : KNOWLEDGE FOR ACTION: A GUIDE TO OVERCOMING BARRIERS TO ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE.

Knowledge for Action is about two of my lifelong goals. The first is to produce actionable knowledge that individuals can use to create organizations of any type, in which the search for valid knowledge, a commitment to personal responsibility and stewardship, and a dedication to effective action and learning are paramount. I believe that such a goal facilitates human competence, confidence, and efficacy and, at the same time, leads to innovative, flexible, and effective organizations.

My second lifelong goal is to design the research methods that will produce this valid actionable knowledge. I seek research methods that require high standards for testing the validity of researchers' propositions. I am especially concerned that we, as researcher-interveners, do our best to make sure that we are not kidding ourselves-and those who use our knowledge-about the validity and actionability of that knowledge. I especially seek research methods that empower participants to be genuine partners with researchers. A genuine partnership means that the researchers take on the primary responsibility for the technical features of the research; the participants and researchers jointly focus on the strategic goals of the researchers; and the participants are especially responsible for implementing the research results in such a way that their validity is always tested in everyday life.

Background of the Book

About five years ago, seven owner-directors of a consulting firm dedicated to the highest quality of value-added management consulting asked me to help them in their quest to create a consulting firm with qualities of learning and responsibility similar to those I have been describing. I was, and still am, impressed with their dedication, integrity, and brightness. I was especially impressed with their commitment to learning. I agreed to work with them, and the techniques and results of that project are used throughout the book to illustrate how my two goals were achieved in that project and might be achieved in many other projects.

There are at least two types of organizational learning. One focuses on changing organizational routines. It is incremental and adaptive. The second focuses on practices that lead to a new framework for learning and to new routines. The ideas in Knowledge for Action apply to both types but, in keeping with my goals, especially to the second. For example, I focus on changing organizational politics that discourage organizational learning-especially around problems that are embarrassing and threatening-and I make this change occur first at the highest level of management.

Audience

Knowledge for Action is aimed at organizational researchers who diagnose and help to change o: ganizations. One primary group of these researchers is composed of faculty and graduate students interested in field research that has organizational learning as its main objective. The second primary group is composed of fulltime researchers in organizations, organizational development professionals, and planners and implementers of management education.

The book is also aimed at line executives who wish to create learning organizations. Line executives of consulting firms of all types should find the studies in the book especially relevant.

Overview of the Contents

The book is divided into three parts and an appendix. Part One focuses on defensive routines at the organizational, intergroup, group, and individual levels. In Chapter One, I show that social scientists have conducted much research to conclude that defensive routines represent massive and pervasive causes of ineffective learning. I also show that most of the research gives little actionable advice about overconiing defensive routines. Indeed, where the research says something that is actionable, the advice may actually exacerbate the problem. In Chapter Two, I focus on the theory of action and its accompanying assumptions that I used to conduct the research project described in the book.

Part Two focuses on the case study of the consulting firm. I show how I diagnosed the defensive routines of the seven director owners, and I describe the impact those routines had on learning throughout the organization (Chapters Three and Four). In Chapter Five, I describe the feedback session in which the directors commented on my findings, and in Chapter Six, I discuss the change seminar in which the directors participated.

Part Three illustrates what happened afterward for a period of five years. I have selected five exemplars of the kinds of changes that occurred during these years. I selected these examples because they illustrate problems that the directors had said at the outset were critical and were unlikely to be solved. The reason for their pessimistic prediction was that these issues, although well known in the organization, were undiscussable. Some directors reported that on the rare occasions when the issues were discussed the resulting group dynamics led to polarization and distancing among individuals, which in turn cast the problems outside the realm of influence. One of the criteria for assessing the effectiveness of interventions is, as we shall see, the degree to which issues that hitherto cannot be discussed or influenced become discussable and correctable.

Each example is described by means of conversation transcribed from a tape recording. Each is also accompanied by discussions of how and why I, as the intervener, acted as I did. Chapter Seven describes how the CEO (who was also a director-owner) and a director explored how they pushed each other's buttons instead of resolving their problems. Chapter Eight illustrates how two directors explored their degree of mutual mistrust in ways that built trust. Chapter Nine addresses an age-old problem in consulting firms that use a rigorous analytical procedure and theories: how do you recognize, evaluate, and teach rigorous analysis? Chapter Ten describes what I believe to be a very rare event. The CEO asked for a performance review from the other directors, his immediate reports. He asked that it be done in a group setting so that he could use the directors as resources and so that they too could perhaps begin to see each other as resources. In Chapter Eleven, I describe a situation in which two directors expressing their anger with each other "went ballistic," yet they were able to manage the episode so that their relationship became closer and more effective. A summary and the implications of the case study are presented in Chapter Twelve.

The Appendix deals with the implications for conducting research that produces actionable knowledge that can be used by practitioners, and whose use becomes a test of features of that knowledge. I focus on the nature of the theory and the empirical research required to produce actionable knowledge. I suggest that the present concepts of causality used in designing and executing research will have to be supplemented with an additional concept. Finally, I show why the traditional differentiations between basic and applied research, scholarship, and consulting are not only counterproductive but will eventually be outdated. The ways these distinctions are presently made may illustrate researchers' defensive routines more than valid rules about the conduct of research.

Knowledge for Action is a follow-up to Action Science (Argyris, Putnam, & Smith, 1985). In that book, my coauthors and I attempted to define the scholarly linkages of action science, to show how action science differs from traditional descriptive research, and to show how the education of researcher-interveners requires that they construct experiences similar to those they will have to create for individuals in organizations when they attempt interventions to change the status quo. Researcher-interveners will have to show that they are competent in the concepts and skills that they intend to teach others. Otherwise, it is unlikely that they can help to produce learning organizations or, indeed, learning societies.

The present book builds upon Action Science in three ways. It shows in detail how action science methods can be used in real life to produce actionable knowledge that causes lasting changes in the status quo. It also presents a more explicit concept of "design causality." If knowledge is to be actionable, I believe that design causality is a more relevant concept of causality than researchers' presently preferred concept.

Finally, Knowledge for Action illustrates how theory that is actionable can be tested by practitioners as they implement it in everyday practice. Continual testing by practitioners means that theory is no longer limited to testing by scholars.

I would like to thank Dianne Argyris, Richard Hackman, William Issacs, Donald Schon, and Richard Walton for their thoughtful comments.

Boston, Massachusetts CHRIS ARGYRIS February 1993