The Abilene Paradox
Everyone at the table agreed to a trip that not one of them wanted to take. How does a group choose what every member is against?
197417 min read
American organisational behaviour
Jerry B. Harvey
1935 – 2015
Professor of management science at George Washington University. His 1974 article "The Abilene Paradox: The Management of Agreement" opened with a true story about his own family driving fifty-three miles to Abilene, Texas, on a July afternoon that none of them wanted, and used it to argue that organisations fail at least as often from mismanaged agreement as from mismanaged conflict.