The Abilene paradox is a term that describes a phenomenon under which a group collectively agrees to a decision that is paradoxically against the interests of most or all of the members of that group.

We’ve all encountered the Abilene Paradox at some point, but maybe we didn’t know the scholarly phrase for it. In short, most summarize it as management by agreement, whether for the best or worst.

In the days before air conditioning, a husband and wife were visiting her parents in a small West Texas town. As they were relaxing one Sunday afternoon, the wife's father suggested that they all ...

FORT BRAGG, N.C. -- Members of the 18th Financial Management Center spent the afternoon of Feb. 19 working on a unique team building experience. The team building was focused on the "The Abilene ...

JERRY B. Harvey, a professor of management science, told the following story (paraphrased here) in an article he wrote in 1974 called the ‘the Abilene Paradox: The Management of Agreement’: One day a ...

Whether it was a fable or a fact, Prof Jerry Harvey’s Abilene Paradox was epoch-making for offering an instructive lesson on how groupthink yields boomerangs. Coined in 1974, the Abilene paradox was ...

This is a phenomenon where a group agrees to do something despite the fact that privately most, or even all, members of the group disagree on doing it. The Abilene paradox is seen whenever people who ...