Russia-Ukraine and the Abilene Paradox.
The Abilene paradox is one where in a group, people will not voice their private opinion if it goes against the “grain” of the rest of the room, even though collectively many of the individuals may disagree. For example, this could be evident in corporate (boss/worker/board member) type settings. Where the head of the company will voice an opinion about a strategic direction of the company, people individually may disagree, but they don’t do anything about it and go with the “consensus in the room”, even though after the fact they find out that individually everyone (or at least some) people disagreed.
The idea was written in an article by Jerry B. Harvey in 1974 “The Abilene Paradox: The Management of Agreement”. In the introduction Harvey describes an uncomfortable scenario where everyone agreed to do it (go in a hot car in the summer and drive many miles to get mediocre food) when after the fact the people all found out they agreed so as not to disturb what seemed to be the consensus. To quote Harvey’s summary“Stated simply, it is as follows: Organizations frequently take actions in contradiction to what they really want to do, and therefore defeat the very purposes they are trying to achieve…”
An important outcome stated by Harvey is that “the inability to manage agreement is a major source of organization dysfunction.”
Here is a link to the entire article. It is worth the read. I think that the Abilene paradox is an incredibly useful depiction of power struggles in organizations, and the enactment of tyranny from organizations and people who run them. Harvey goes through the methods by which one can diagnose and “bypass” such instances.
I think as a reader one ought to add this to their arsenal of critical thinking. That is, reconciling what you are thinking versus complying with the masses. People laud the characteristic of “going against the grain”, and successful people (in any gauge of success) will often tell you their success is because “they didn’t listen”. While this may be true, the more often seen outcome is that people comply, even when they disagree or feel differently.
I think that one can apply Abilene to so many scenarios and expose to themselves whether there is consensus or just group think, which the whole is not the sum of its actual parts (that is on an individual basis people aren’t conceding…or fighting not to concede). This can be said of all government leaders and their cabinets and who remains in close contact with them.
I think Putin’s cabinet and efforts to go to war are struck by Abilene. People are protecting their jobs, and their heads. Whether the actual popular Russian consensus is to go to war with Ukraine remains to be seen. In the interim, someone close to Putin must have the audacity to throw Abilene out the window, and voice their opinion, before more civilians die.