Organization Man: Rational or Self-Actualizing?

Abstract

Eor a number of years, Professor Chris Argyris has advocated a revolution in administrative practices and forms that would transform organizations into fit environments for human self-actualization. Argyris' prescriptions for organizations derive from, and are not dissimilar from, the prescriptions of other adherents to the human relations movement MacGregor's Theory Y, for example but are perhaps the most sweeping of these, and based on the most explicit view of the nature of Man. His position, particularly in his more recent writings, acknowledges its debt to the motivational theories of Abraham Maslow; and in this way aligns itself with a broader stream of contemporary revolutionary counterculture thought that is concerned with remaking all of our social institutions, and not just formal organiza-