Re: How to Bring Out Mental Models?

Gene Donahue (GDONAHUE@atlas.creighton.edu)
Mon, 16 Jan 1995 11:51:49 CST

Thanks to R Karash and others for sharing their approaches to mental
models. I am relatively new to this list, but I have found the
various discussions the most helpful I've found on any 'net' group
yet.
I teach business ethics, but I have a long-standing interest in
cognitional theory and decision-making processes. I have read P Senge
and some of Chris Argyris and D. Schon's works.
In response to R Karash's request for more resources or approaches to
mental models, etc. I would like to recommend the following:
Garrett Barden, AFTER PRINCIPLES (Univ of Notre Dame Press), who
provides a phenomenological approach to what is "common" to all of us
and our various "mental models," namely, the OPERATIONS each of us
(and all of us) go through in our own heads. These operations (e.g.,
sensing, questioning, imagining, feeling, etc) are prior to conceptual or
mental models and hence they can form a 'skeleton' which is common to
all of us and hence a point for beginning a dialogue when we seem to
disagree. His book is relatively short (slightly more than 100
pages), and is filled with examples as well as some (I think) very
helpful argumentation.
Another author who studied under Argyris and who has taken some
further steps along the line of going more deeply into some of this
same material is William Torbert, whose MANAGING THE CORPORATE DREAM
(1987) is now out of print, but an excellent and basic resource for
how these same cognitive operations (and psychological development, a
la Robert Kegan) guide managers and their organizations. He also has
a more recent book, THE POWER OF BALANCE (Sage, 1991) which is in
print that builds upon his earlier MCD and goes deeper into both the
theory behind it as well as into his autobiographical experience
in developing and using the method--in both academia and in
consulting work with organizations.
Gene Donahue
email: gdonahue@creighton.edu