Emperor's New Clothes 'And The Abilene Paradox'

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The purpose of this essay is to analyze a personal conflict using Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes” and Jerry B. Harvey’s concept “The Abilene Paradox.” It will also describe an experience in the personal life of Debbie Williams and attempt to compare its similarities to the Abilene Paradox. (Harvey, 1988) The tendency for groups to embark on excursions that no group member wants is what Harvey now refers to as the Abilene Paradox. Harvey goes on to explain how the Abilene Paradox “leads an organization to take actions in contradiction to what they really want to do and therefore defeat the very purpose they are trying to achieve.” (Harvey, 1988) An Analysis of The Emperor’s new Clothes provides an example of the Abilene Paradox to the reader. In this age old story, the emperor longed to have a new suit that would provide him with added new and elaborate clothing as he is accustomed to having. The king, in all of his infinite wisdom was literally taken by scam artists because neither he nor his employees wanted to admit that the other had been taken as well. Each person chose to take the excursion of pretending to see this elaborate new suit being spun for the Emperor. While none of them actually wanted to do so, they each did. …show more content…

The situation culminated when an inquiry was made by Debbie to several visiting family members as to the details of the move “The Devil wears Prada.” (Frankel, 2006) The inquiry regarded details of the movie and also took place as a prelude to the family deciding on a movie to watch later. The ultimate goal was to watch something no one has seen before. However, with all of the discussion on “The Devil Wears Prada”, the movie mysteriously was selected as the movie to watch. It was not until midway through the show before anyone would ask the question, “Why are we watching this

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