Jeeze Louise!
This week’s Chris Argyris reading was a bit of a mental struggle and I felt like throwing in the towel after the first few pages to be quite honest. One key idea that I enjoyed and could relate to is the espoused theory vs. theory-in-use. Argyris defines espoused theory as “the words we use to convey what we do or what we would like others to think we do”. When asked to describe our behaviour in a particular situation or under certain circumstances, we usually give an answer within an espoused theory of action.
To clarify, imagine reading something difficult to comprehend (such as the Argyris reading. Ironic!) Your espoused theory in this instance (what you think you do) would be something along the lines of pausing/rereading until you understand, moving along and coming back to this idea later, trying to vaguely get an idea of what the reading is about but continuing on because something further down the track might help to clarify things or lastly, continuing to read and not worrying about the things that you did not understand.
Our theory in use, however, is different to what we say or think we do. It represents what we actually do. Using the same example, our theory in use, when coming across a difficult reading, would perhaps suggest that we read it and we understood it (despite large portions of the text that we failed to grasp).