Into the realm of organizational folly: A poem, a review, and a typology of organizational stupidity

Guilherme Azevedo ()
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Guilherme Azevedo: Audencia Business School

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Abstract: This ‘Provocation essay' is aimed at triggering reflection and fostering renewed research into organizational stupidity and its intersections with management learning. It opens with a critical poem evoking diverse aspects of our daily encounters with the idiocy, nonsense, and absurdity that pervades organizations. It continues with a more comprehensive review of the still diffuse research literature to reveal a typology of three approaches to studying organizational stupidity (systemic-mechanistic, critical-sociological and cultural-functionalist). It closes with a discussion of how stupidity detracts from reflexivity but can also play useful roles in organizations, which ultimately invites more management learning research on the topic.

Keywords: Organizational bullshit; organizational incompetence; organizational nonsense; organizational stupidity; poetry (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-04-23
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem
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Published in Management Learning, 2023, 54 (2), pp.267-281. ⟨10.1177/13505076211066276⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03662177

DOI: 10.1177/13505076211066276

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