Argyris, Christopher

(b. 1923) Gen Mgt

U.S. academic and consultant. Known for his work on training and organizational learning, specifically T-Groups (see sensitivity training), and single-loop and double-loop learning. Argyris’s research is set out in Organizational Learning (1978), cowritten with Donald Schön. Their work also produced the idea of a learning organization, later developed by Peter Senge.

     Argyris argues that organizations depend fundamentally on people, but too often stand in the way of people fulfilling their potential. The main thrust of his work has been to explore the relations between personality and the organization and to suggest how these relations can best be made mutually beneficial.