‘Functional Stupidity’ – updated (new study)

Back in 2013, Improbable reported on the emergence of a new organisational concept – ‘Functional Stupidity’, see  ‘A Stupidity-Based Theory of Organizations’. Now, the idea of ‘Functional Stupidity’ has been refined by Roland Paulsen, who is a researcher at the Department of Business Administration, Lund University, Sweden. “I distinguish 10 ‘stupidity rationales’ emanating from reflective types […]

Male-Body-Part-Metaphors-driven Organizational Change

If, from a critical and/or strategic management perspective, you’ve examined the metaphorical resources provided by specific parts of the male body for thinking [about] masculinity in social and organizational contexts, then, like many others, you may well have concentrated on the phallus. Now, a new paper in the journal Human Relations (March 5, 2015) points […]

Organizational ignorance (Towards a managerial perspective on the unknown)

Those interested in the management of organisations may already be aware that the concept of ‘Ignorance Management’ has its own page at Wikipedia. A definition was first provided in 2012 by John Israilidis Antoniou and colleagues at Loughborough University, UK.    [source] “Ignorance Management is a process of discovering, exploring, realising, recognising and managing ignorance […]

Learning Organizational Learning

The concepts of Organizational Learning (OL) and Learning Organisation (LO) have been prevalent in the management literature for several decades [1] [2] – but exactly what, if anything, differentiates Organizational Learning (OL) from Learning Organisation (LO)? Answers are to be found in the SCMS Journal of Indian Management, January – March, 2012, where authors Dr. […]

The Virtue of Vagueness in Vision Statements

Those tasked with running large organisations sometimes have to make major changes to achieve organisational goals. What can be done to help ensure that these changes are effective? One strategy – proposed by professor Dennis A. Gioia and colleagues at the Department of Management and Organization of Penn State University, is to deliberately introduce a […]