‘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 […]

A Stupidity-Based Theory of Organizations

Stupidity, organizations, and the combination of stupidity and organizations all receive consideration in this study: “A Stupidity-Based Theory of Organizations,” Mats Alvesson, André Spicer [pictured here], Journal of Management Studies, vol. 49, no. 7, November 2012 pages 1194–1220. (Thanks to investigator Mats Andersson for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at Lund University, Sweden […]

Stupidity papers called for

In Spring 2013 the scholarly publication parallax is likely to become the very first journal to have had an entire issue devoted to the theme of ‘Stupidity’. The ‘call for papers’ outlines the theme(s) for potential authors. “We invite papers that respond to stupidity by examining its marginalisation within philosophical practice whilst also encouraging contributors […]

Choosing politicians randomly produces better results

Democracies would be better off if they chose some of their politicians at random. That’s the word, mathematically obtained, from a team of Italian physicists, economists, and political analysts. The team includes the trio whose earlier research showed, also mathematically, that bureaucracies would be more efficient if they promoted people at random. Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, Cesare Garofalo, […]

The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

The basic laws of human stupidity are ancient. The definitive essay on the subject is younger. Called The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, it was published in 1976 by an Italian economist. Professor Carlo M Cipolla [pictured here, below] taught at several universities in Italy, and for many years at the University of California, Berkeley. He also […]

Stupid stories and subsequent stupidity

Can reading a ‘stupid story’ make you behave less intelligently (more stupidly)? Assoc. Prof. Dr. Markus Appel (pictured) has examined this question in a recent experimental study at the Johannes Kepler Universität Linz Institut für Pädagogik und Psychologie, Österreich. 81 participants read a story about an extremely unintelligent right-wing soccer hooligan dressed as a skinhead […]