ABSTRACT
The main themes of Chris Argyris's "The Individual and Organization: Some Problems of Mutual Adjustment" were initially vigorously challenged by his contemporaries. Management science at the time was characterized by a split between two opposing schools of thought: classical and humanistic. The challenge Argyris presented to the classical, pyramidal value system lead to scrutiny by classicists in return. Argyris's psychological focus on the personal maturation process, the drive for selfactualization, and the analogy with human evolution was deemed insufficient to fully explain organizational change processes. Argyris also developed the idea of double-loop learning in response to his critics. His subsequent work explained the multidimensional nature of his ideas more fully. Even toward the end of his life, Argyris continued to work to improve methods of learning. The article also provided the basis for Argyris's other publications in communication and training practices. His entire body of work is integral to the development of behavioral management science.
