Abilene Paradox By Jerry Harvey
What is the "Abilene Paradox" and do you think that it is prevalent in organizations as Harvey seems to think?
The Abilene paradox occurs when organizations take actions contrary to the desires of its members and defeat the purposes they want to achieve. The Abilene paradox happens when everyone agrees on a basic matter of a situation and fails to communicate correctly. For example, as shown in Jerry Harvey's movie, an organization was working on this particular project that was taking up significant financial resources and did not look that it was accomplishing any results. However the director of the project was trying to push it through and his employees were supporting him even though they all felt that it was not going to take them anywhere;
The Abilene paradox occurs when organizations take actions contrary to the desires of its members and defeat the purposes they want to achieve. The Abilene paradox happens when everyone agrees on a basic matter of a situation and fails to communicate correctly. For example, as shown in Jerry Harvey's movie, an organization was working on this particular project that was taking up significant financial resources and did not look that it was accomplishing any results. However the director of the project was trying to push it through and his employees were supporting him even though they all felt that it was not going to take them anywhere;