Types of Ambiguity

David J. Wilkinson

Chapter 3 in The Ambiguity Advantage, 2006, pp 42-66 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Trying to encapsulate and define ambiguity is difficult. As noted in Chapter 2, ambiguity is itself ambiguous by its very nature. One reason for this is that the experience of ambiguity is a fairly subjective one and consequently does not affect everyone in the same way. Indeed, in the next chapter, while exploring individual responses to ambiguity, we note that some people are fully aware of a particular ambiguity while others are totally unaware of the existence of that ambiguity. As we have seen in the previous chapter, simply defining and hence recognizing an ambiguity is paradigm-dependent, by which I mean that where an engineer might see uncertainty and a lack of data, a moral philosopher may see a clash of values — the thinking system is different in each case. In this and the following chapter, ambiguity and people’s responses to it are explored. Part of that exploration is to examine the structures or lack of structure in a variety of ambiguous situations. The attributes of each of the following types of ambiguity need to be explored: 1 Paradox/contradiction 2 Double bind 3 Chaos/randomness 4 Complexity 5 Dilemmas — moral, ethical, and personal 6 Cognitive and emotional dissonance

Keywords: Disaster Manager; Emergent Property; Cognitive Dissonance; Generative Leader; Continental Drift (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-59789-1_3

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9780230597891

DOI: 10.1057/9780230597891_3

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().