What Is the “abilene Paradox” and Do You Think That It Is Prevalent in Organizations as Harvey Seems to Think?

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; in fact it was on the way to cause the company to bankrupt. The employees failed to communicate this among each other or to their leader because they were afraid of being criticized or even losing their job.

All the people involved in the project finally realized that neither one of them actually supported it; on the contrary, they all thought it had to be discontinued. It only took one brave person to stand up and say what he really thought of the project. He finally got over the fear and brought up his concerns. It turned out that all employees agreed with him, they were just scared to communicate it.

Unfortunately,