List of figures vii

List of tables viii

Acknowledgements ix

Preface xiii

Introduction: The Evolving Field of Organizational Learning 1

Part I Organizational Defenses

1 Making Sense of Limited Learning 19

2 Tacit Knowledge and Management 54

3 Why Individuals and Organizations have Difficulty in Double-loop Learning 67

4 Crafting a Theory of Practice: The Case of Organizational Paradoxes 92

5 Today’s Problems with Tomorrow’s Organizations 107

6 Teaching Smart People How to Learn 127

7 A Leadership Dilemma: Skilled Incompetence 139

Part II Inhibiting Organizational Learning and Effectiveness

8 Organizational Learning and Management Information Systems 151

9 Strategy Implementation: An Experiment in Learning 164

10 How Strategy Professionals Deal with Threat: Individual and Organizational 174

11 The Dilemma of Implementing Controls: The Case of Managerial Accounting 186

12 Human Problems with Budgets 196

13 Bridging Economics and Psychology: The Case of the Economic Theory of the Firm 214

Part III The Counterproductive Consequences of Organizational Development and Human Resource Activities

14 Good Communication that Blocks Learning 229

15 Reasoning, Action Strategies, and Defensive Routines: The Case of OD Practitioners 239

16 Inappropriate Defenses against the Monitoring of Organization Development Practice 267

17 Do Personal Growth Laboratories Represent an Alternative Culture? 281

Part IV The Inhibition of Valid and Usable Information from the Correct Use of Normal Science

18 Actionable Knowledge: Design Causality in the Service of Consequential Theory 297

19 Field Theory as a Basis for Scholarly Consulting 310

20 Unrecognized Defenses of Scholars: Impact on Theory and Research 323

21 Seeking Truth and Actionable Knowledge: How the Scientific Method Inhibits Both 335

22 Problems and New Directions for Industrial Psychology 343

23 The Incompleteness of Social-Psychological Theory: Examples from Small Group, Cognitive Consistency, and Attribution Research 375

24 Dangers in Applying Results from Experimental Social Psychology 395

25 Making Knowledge More Relevant to Practice: Maps for Action 415

26 Participatory Action Research and Action Science Compared 432

27 Some Unintended Consequences of Rigorous Research 440

Index 454

Focusing on learning and organizational politics, the book addresses the key issues of:

• 
  
• Organizational learning and Action Science.
  
• Organizational effectiveness and what inhibits it.
  
• Organizational development and human resource activities.
  
• Usable knowledge and how it is inhibited.