Personality and Organization

Personality and Organization is the breakthrough book of the American behavioral scientist and organizational-learning theorist Chris Argyris. The English original was published in 1957 and is widely recognized as a foundational work of organizational behavior. The Chinese edition, translated by Guo Xuli and Xian Hongxia, was published in 2007 by Renmin University of China Press as part of the "Zhanlu Culture · Master Classics" series. At its core is the author's theory of "personality and organization," also called the "immaturity–maturity" theory. Argyris holds that organizational behavior results from the mutual integration of two elements: the individual and the formal organization. The individual in an organization has an independent personality and is not, as traditional management theory assumes, merely a cog in a machine who passively accepts organizational constraints. The author therefore focuses on the growth tendencies of a healthy personality, describing the developmental process by which a person moves from passivity to activity, from dependence to relative independence, and from shallow to deepened interests. On this basis, Argyris advances three interrelated propositions: there is a fundamental incompatibility between the rationalizing principles of formal organization and the growth needs of the healthy individual; this incompatibility produces frustration and a sense of failure in employees; and the formal principles of organization in turn generate competitive pressure, so that the adaptive behavior employees adopt to fit the organization in turn obstructs organizational integration, creating a vicious circle. The book also analyzes the adaptive behavior of individuals and groups, management's assumptions and responses, and the position of first-line managers as intermediaries between levels. In the solutions section, the author proposes achieving coordination through new organizational design, including enlarging the scope of work, adopting participative and employee-centered leadership, increasing employee responsibility, and relying more on employees' self-direction and self-control; he also discusses the limits of these approaches and explores how to cultivate effective managerial behavior. The book is aimed mainly at upper-level undergraduates and graduate students, especially in engineering, business, public administration, and public health schools, and is also of value to corporate managers.