Ignorantics: The Theory, Research, and Practice of Ignorance in Organizational Survival and Prosperity

Rouxelle De Villiers ()
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Rouxelle De Villiers: Faculty of Business, Economics and Law, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland 1010, New Zealand

Administrative Sciences, 2025, vol. 15, issue 7, 1-19

Abstract: This study responds to the call by some scholars to establish a framework for ignorance. It challenges the myth that ignorance is all bad and an utterly undesirable state in organizations and proposes a new framework for the application of ignorance analytics in organizations. It includes a taxonomy of deliberate and unconscious ignorance in decision-making and judgment as well as the drivers of personal and corporate deliberate ignorance and their behavioral implications. Ignorance plays a substantial role in competency development, scientific progress, innovation, and organizational strategic advantage. The proposed framework can help developers of talent, including management trainers, educators, and HR practitioners, to recognize the drivers of willful ignorance and help managers design effective interventions to move employees from unconscious incompetence to mastery. This paper suggests an agenda and identifies opportunities for future research.

Keywords: hedging; transaction costs; dynamic programming; risk management; post-decision state variable (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L M M0 M1 M10 M11 M12 M14 M15 M16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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