Chris Argyris: biography of this expert in organizations.

A summary of the life of Chris Argyris and his contributions to the business world.

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 will learn more about the details of his life, reviewing his intellectual and professional career and reviewing what have been his most important contributions in the field of organizational development, for which he is known today.

Brief biography of Chris Argyris

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

Chris Argyris' upbringing straddled his two homelands, growing up in Irvington, another New Jersey town, but also spending time in Athens, the capital of Greece.

His 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 in the United States.He served in the Signal Corps, participating in various operations in the context of the Second World War. Once he was able to return to America, he continued his education, in this case entering Clark University, where he obtained a degree in Psychology.

It was at Clark University that Chris Argyris had the opportunity to meet one of the most important psychologists in history, the expert in organizational psychology, Kurt Lewin, and to learn from him.who would greatly influence Argyris' own thinking and line of work. After graduating in 1947, he continued his higher education, this time at the University of Kansas, where he majored in psychology and economics in 1949.

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

Academic career

Chris Argyris immediately immersed himself in the academic world 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 staff of the university's Labor and Management Center. The director of that section was sociology and economics expert Edward Wight Bakke.

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

After a long period at Yale, in 1971 he decided to move to Harvard University, another of the best institutions in the United States. Here he would assume the role of professor in organizational behavior, in which he was already an eminent figure. Chris Argyris was not limited to teaching alone, as he also ran a consulting firm in Cambridge called Monitor.

Final years

Thanks to a lifetime dedicated to research and teaching, in 2006, Chris Argyris was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Cambridge, Chris Argyris was awarded an honorary doctorate in law by the University of Toronto in 2006.. This is not the only accreditation to his excellent career, as Yale University, precisely where Argyris spent a good part of his career, also awarded him a Doctor of Science degree in 2011.

It was in 2013 when Chris Argyris passed away at the age of 90. His mortal remains are located in the city of Weston, belonging to Massachusetts.

Main contributions of his work

Chris Argyris' 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 the formal level, as well as the mechanisms used to manage and control people, and how they affected the individuals themselves. He later redirected his research to focus on the behavior of managers.

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

In contrast to this reasoning, when we have a team made up of adults and a reasonable level of maturity, but at the head is an executive who uses more traditional techniques, based on mere authority and without delegating to subordinates or allowing them to assume more responsibility than they have, we will obtain a poorer performance caused by a low level of motivation.

In another twist on the subject of his main works, Chris Argyris studied what effect the social researcher had on the organization when working on it. Another of his major areas of interest was the study of human reason in the business field. That is, beyond behavior in general, he wanted to know what were the reasonings that workers made when making decisions and generating actions.

The science of action

Much of Chris Argyris' work was focused on the latter, which he referred to as the science of action. What interests him with this work is to find the model that explains how humans reason when faced with threatening scenarios, in order to explain how they design their pattern of response actions.

This allowed him to distinguish between two learning modelsthe single-cycle versus the double-cycle model. The first one refers to those behaviors performed to obtain the results we foresee and thus neutralize the difficult situation we are facing. The alternative would be dual-cycle learning. This other model refers to behaviors that not only aim to put an end to 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 caused the threat to appear in order to be in a position to avoid it in the future, having the necessary information to do so. These explanations of people's behaviors could be applied at both the personal and organizational levels..

The ladder of inference

Within the theories of action science, Chris Argyris created a tool he referred to as the ladder of inference. With it, he tries to explain the scheme of thought that a person generates from the moment he/she is presented with a situation until he/she evaluates it and decides to exercise a certain behavior in this respect. To do so, he draws a ladder in the He draws a ladder in which each step, from the lowest to the highest, represents a step in this thought scheme..

The ladder would begin with reality and facts, which would be the lowest rung. From there we would move on to the selected reality, that is, the objective situation as it has appeared before the subject. Then we would find the interpreted reality, i.e., the reality as conceived by that particular person, which does not necessarily coincide with that of other people. The next step would be the assumptions that this subject makes regarding this interpretation of reality.

In turn, these assumptions will lead him to generate certain conclusions about the event he is witnessing. The conclusions will lead him up another step, to the 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 in fact perform.

La escalera de las inferencias es solo una de las múltiples contribuciones a la ciencia organizacional que Chris Argyris nos dejó en su legado.

Referencias bibliográficas:

• Argyris, C. (1970). Intervention theory and method: A behavioral science view. Addison-Wesley.
• Argyris, C. (1977). Double loop learning in organizations. Harvard business review.
• Argyris, C. (1994). Good communication that blocks learning. Harvard business review.
• Argyris, C., Schon, D. A. (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.