A Stupidity-Based Theory of Organizations (pages 1194–1220) Mats Alvesson and André Spicer We do not see ourselves as immune to functional stupidity. We see functional stupidity as a general condition that pervades many spheres of social life (Alvesson, 2013a; Foley, 2010), including academia. Contemporary academia could be seen as a hothouse for functional stupidity. In academia, huge amounts of time and energy are expended on writing papers for publication in top ranked journals, in our bid to ‘play the game’. These papers may be read or used by very few, and mainly by those eager to pad out the reference lists attached to their own papers (Gabriel, 2010). Rarely is there any serious discourse around the meaningfulness of this enterprise (cf. Grey, 2010), apart from occasional debates about ‘relevance’ (e.g. Hodgkinson and Rousseau, 2009; Kieser and Leiner, 2009). Perhaps this is because publications are not only a measure of our ‘market value’ but also are seen as an expression of our intelligence and knowledge. The result of an article being accepted for publication can be a deep sense of satisfaction and strong identity-confirmation, simply because it ‘proves’ how smart we are. Of course there are material rewards, but these are often less important than the symbolic ones. One could say that functional stupidity is a key resource for any institution eager to maximize careerism. This can make researchers into willing journal paper technicians who focus on writing papers for leading journals within a narrow subfield. This may detract from broader scholarship with slower and less predictable results and, perhaps, with a greater likelihood of saying something really interesting and/or socially useful (Alvesson and Sandberg, 2013).
Posted on: Thu, 06 Mar 2014 07:04:15 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015