Compendium of Harvey’s The Abilene Paradox counters the litany of books on conflict management, divulging the insidious side of agreement management. The author, Jerry Harvey, contends that group agreement can be no less debilitating, and provides some prescriptive antidotes.

Setting around a domino table in the sweltering summer heat of Coleman, Texas, Dr. Harvey endures the deafening quiet to play his in-laws’ favorite game. The only interruption provided was the low hum of a fan in the window interspersed with the clack of dominos plopped on the table.

Out of the silence, his father-in-law said, “Why don’t we go have dinner in the cafeteria in Abilene?” On his heels, the author’s wife echoed, “Sounds like a great idea. How about you Jerry?”

The irony of one agreement falling to the next, mirrored one domino falling onto the next, as Dr. Harvey went through a flood of mental pictures. Flashes of the hour-long trip in a 1958 Buick without air conditioning, with the west-Texas sun baking the dust-caked pilgrims sped through his mind.

Yet, he found himself saying, “Sounds good to me. I just hope your mother wants to go.” To which his dutiful mother-in-law, responded, “Of course I want to go. I haven’t been to Abilene in a long time.”
The four hapless venturers boarded the car and headed for a long, one hour trip to the “big city” of Abilene. Sure enough, the sweat, dust, heat, and noise drained the life of the quartet by the time they arrived at the cafeteria.

Similarly, the food was bleak and enjoyment bleaker, as they trudged back four hours later to their original posts. Rested, Dr. Harvey broke the ice with, “That was a great trip, wasn’t it?”

The mother-in-law claimed, “Well, to tell you the truth, I really didn’t enjoy it and would’ve preferred to stay here… I wouldn’t have gone unless you all hadn’t pressured me into it.”

Dr. Harvey responded, ‘Don’t put me in the “you all” category. I only went to satisfy the rest of you. You’re the culprits.’

The daughter chimed in, “Don’t call me a culprit. You, and daddy and mama wanted to go. I just went along to keep you happy.”

To which the father-in-law confessed that neither did he want to go, but he thought they may be bored, and wanted to make them happy by doing something.

This simple event served as a moral lesson on how organizations come to errant directions through the complexities of interpersonal dynamics endemic to them.

From this springboard, he launches into the malady of “group think” that occurs with managers. He discloses a progression of six steps that groups take resulting in failure to manage agreement effectively.

To start with, the members individually agree in private about the nature of the problem, despite facts. Next, they agree in private about the steps to cope with the problem. Third, members fail to candidly communicate their desires to one another. In fact, they misrepresent the collective reality. With inaccurate information, members then make collective decisions that require conflicting actions, thereby arriving at counterproductive results. As a result, members experience frustration, irritation, and dissatisfaction with the organization. Finally, if the inability to manage agreement is not dealt with, the cycle repeats itself with greater intensity.

To attest, the author provides several case studies. For example, the Onyx Corporation continued to invest in a R&D program whose technology showed would not work. However, because the company was so invested in it, the senior officers all continued the façade of progress, each withholding their reservations from the other as well as the board.

Early in the work, Harvey provides a Diagnostic Survey to help organizations determine if they are infected with the paradox. The symptoms include:

1. There is conflict within the organization.
2. Organization members feel impotent, frustrated, and unhappy when trying to deal with it. Many are looking for ways to escape.
3. Organization members place blame on the boss or other groups.
4. Small subgroups of friends and associates meet to discuss company problems.
5. In meetings where the same groups meet with other groups they soften or obfuscate their language.
6. After such meetings, members complain to trusted associates they didn’t say what they wanted to say.
7. Attempts to solve the problems do not work.
8. Individuals seem to get along better, be happier, and operate more effectively outside the organization than within it.

He also points to more insidious examples of how the Abilene Paradox has played out. The first was the Watergate trials. It seemed that every individual in the plot had reservations, each was just following orders and the wishes of the other co-conspirators.

Another example was the Nazi regime. Interestingly, he placed Adolph Eichmann and the Jewish Councilmen in the same category. Both claimed to be duped in a much larger context, who were victims in their own right. The truth of history is that it is unlikely the Nazi’s would have been able to perpetuate the mass genocide without the willing culpability of the Jewish hierarchy. This was demonstrated by the victorious resistance of the Dane’s to Hitler’s “final solution.”

According to Harvey, blaming and faultfinding are symptomatic of an organization who is engrossed in Abilene-Paradox behavior. Those who criticize usually do not include themselves as targets of blame. Executives begin to assign roles of victims and victimizers to those around them. Ironically, these are irrelevant and dysfunctional, because once a company fails to manage agreement, all are victims.

Harvey also claims there must be fundamental collusion in order for the paradox to take hold. For example, in order for there to be an autocratic boss, there must be willing subordinates, and there cannot be obsequious subordinates without an obsequious boss to go along with it. Each person in the organization must, knowingly or unknowingly, collude with others – superiors, subordinates, and peers – to create the inability to manage agreement effectively.

He distinguishes the Abilene Paradox from what is normally referred to as Conformity Theory. To distinguish the two, he refers to the classic Asch research, where confederates provided false information to the subject, resulting in the subject knowingly giving false information at least one-third of the time.

In the Abilene Paradox, the individual believes they are experiencing group pressure, when in reality they are just experiencing mismanaged agreement. By falsely believing they are subject to group pressure, they are in fact avoiding their own person responsibility, defrauding the group, and compromising their own principles.

Fundamentally, he contends that the driving force that impels this course of action is the strong innate desire in all humans for attachment. To him, the idea of separation is much more powerful than other overt desires, like greed or ambition.

Harvey praises a pilot for a Japanese commercial carrier, named Captain Asoh. He landed without incident in the San Francisco Bay, lined perfectly to the intended airport. When, a media feeding frenzy occurred, and he was made to sit before the NTSB, he readily accepted full responsibility for the error. As a result, the frenzy died, and Asoh continue to fly with the same company for many years.

To fix the problem of a mismanaged agreement, Harvey suggests companies should take more care in hiring new people, place greater emphasis on long-range planning, and motivate one another by our need for attachment rather than fear of separation. He contends we should design more equitable compensation/incentive packages that reward interdependent work, rather than cutthroat competition. Finally, we should foster a climate of cooperation rather than adversarial relationships, like labor and management.

Published one time for exclusively educational purposes. Resource for the compendium provided by The Abilene Paradox and Other Meditations on Management by Jerry B. Harvey (1988, Jossey-Basss Publishers, San Francisco, CA)