Chris Argyris: biography of this organization expert

The figure of Chris Argyris has been key to the evolution of US business philosophy throughout the 20th century.

through this biography of chris argyris We are going to learn more about the details about his life, reviewing his intellectual and professional career and reviewing what have been his most outstanding contributions in the field of organizational development, for which he is today known.

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Brief biography of Chris Argyris

Chris Argyris was born in Newark, in the state of New Jersey in the United States, in the year 1923, along with his twin brother, Thomas S.. His parents were immigrants of Greek origin, who had moved to America in search of a more promising future for their family.

Chris Argyris's upbringing took place between his two lands, on the one hand he grew up in Irvington, another city in New Jersey, but he also spent time in Athens, the capital of Greece.

his stage of youth

Once he came of age, he went on to serve in the United States Army, specifically in the signal corps.

, participating in various operations within the warlike context of World War II. Once he was able to return to America, he continued his training, in this case entering Clark University, where he would earn a degree in Psychology.

Precisely in that faculty, Chris Argyris he had the opportunity to meet one of the most important psychologists in history, the expert in organizational psychology, Kurt Lewin, who would significantly influence the thinking and line of work of Argyris himself. After graduating in 1947, he continued his higher education, this time at the University of Kansas, where he would major in psychology and economics in 1949.

Just two years later, he became a doctor, presenting a thesis focused on behavior within the corporate world, which was supervised by sociologist William Foote Whyte, all a figure in his field, who developed the methodology of participant observation and studied for a lifetime the urban ethnographic behaviors of street gangs in Boston.

Academic career

Immediately Chris Argyris plunged into academia to begin his career as a teacher and researcher. This first stage, which would last two decades, took place at Yale University. Within this prestigious institution, Argyris joined the team at the University's Labor and Management Center. The director of that section was the expert in sociology and economics, Edward Wight Bakke.

Bakke would represent another of the key figures that would generate a significant mark on the approaches of Chris Argyris in his later work.. His career at Yale University also offered him the opportunity to begin teaching in the field of life sciences. management, so these years he also spent as a university professor, sharing his knowledge with the new generations of students.

After a long period at Yale, in 1971 he decided to transfer to Harvard University, another of the best institutions in the United States. In this center he would assume the role of professor in matters of organizational behavior, in which he was already an eminence. Chris Argyris was not limited only to teaching, as he also ran a consulting company in the city of Cambridge, called Monitor.

Last years

Thanks to a lifetime dedicated to research and teaching, in 2006, Chris Argyris was named Doctor Honoris Causa in the discipline of Law through the University of Toronto. It is not the only accreditation of his excellent career, since Yale University, precisely where Argyris spent a good part of his career, also awarded him a doctor of science degree, in the year 2011.

It was in the year 2013 when, when Chris Argyris was 90 years old, he passed away. His mortal remains are in the city of Weston, belonging to Massachusetts.

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Main contributions of his work

Chris Argyris's work is extensive and consists of several important contributions to the field of organizations.. Initially, he focused on studying the types of structure that prevailed in companies at a formal level, as well as the mechanisms that were used to manage people and control them, and how they affected the people themselves individuals. Later he refocused his research to focus on managerial behavior.

In the case of executives, Chris Argyris finds an important variable in their personality type in relation to the maturity of the employees. In this sense, if the manager maintains a positive relationship with his subordinates, making them see that he considers them responsible, they will have a more optimal productivity. This is explained because workers with a high level of maturity will prefer to increase their responsibilities and be able to make decisions.

Contrary to this reasoning, when we have a team made up of adults and a reasonable level of maturity, but At the helm is an executive who uses more traditional techniques, based on mere authority and without delegating to subordinates or allow them to take on more responsibilities than they have, we will get poorer performance caused by a low level of motivation.

In another turn of the helm in the subject of his main works, Chris Argyris he studied what was the effect that the social researcher had on the organization when he worked on it. Another of his great areas of interest resided in the study of human reason in the business field. In other words, beyond the behavior in general, he wanted to know what were the reasoning that the workers used when making decisions and generating actions.

The science of action

A good part of Chris Argyris's work was focused on this last current, which he referred to as the science of action. What interests him with these works is to find the model that explains the way of reasoning of human beings when face threatening scenarios, in order to explain the way in which they design their pattern of actions of answer.

This allowed him distinguish between two learning models, the single cycle versus the double cycle. The first of them refers to those behaviors carried out to obtain results that we anticipate and thus neutralize the difficult situation that we are finding ourselves in. The alternative would be double loop learning. What this other model refers to is the behaviors that not only aim to end the threat, but also to learn about it.

The meaning of the actions that fit this second model would be to be able to learn how to generate a change in the variables that have made the threat appear in order to be able to avoid it in the future, having the necessary information to it. These explanations about people's behaviors could be applied both on a personal and organizational level..

The ladder of inference

Within action science theories, Chris Argyris created a tool he referred to as the inference ladder. With it, he tries to explain the scheme of thought that a person generates from the moment a situation is presented to him until he evaluates it and decides to exercise a certain behavior in this regard. For it draw a stepladder in which each rung, from the lowest to the highest, represents a step in that scheme of thought.

The ladder would start with reality and facts, which would be the lowest step. From there we would go to the selected reality, that is, the objective situation as it has appeared before the subject. Then we would find the interpreted reality, that is, the reality as conceived by that specific person, which does not have to coincide with that of other people. The next step would be the assumptions that this subject makes regarding this interpretation of reality.

In turn, those assumptions will lead you to draw certain conclusions about the event you are witnessing. The conclusions will take him up another step, to beliefs about what he should do about it. Finally, he will complete his ascent in this scheme of thought, reaching what would be the last step, which is none other than the actions or behaviors that he will actually carry out.

The Ladder of Inferences is just one of the many contributions to organizational science that Chris Argyris left us in his legacy.

Bibliographic references:

• Argyros, C. (1970). Intervention theory and method: A behavioral science view. Addison-Wesley.
• Argyros, C. (1977). Double loop learning in organizations. Harvard business review.
• Argyros, C. (1994). Good communication that blocks learning. Harvard business review.
• Argyris, C., Schon, D. TO. (1974). Theory in practice: Increasing professional effectiveness. Jossey-Bass.
• Fulmer, R.M., Keys, J.B. (1998). A conversation with Chris Argyris: The father of organizational learning. Organizational Dynamics.