Strategic Ignorance: A Research Overview

This book develops a comprehensive theory of strategic ignorance in organizations, showing how not-knowing is actively produced, distributed, and maintained as a resource that shapes decision-making. Readers will gain a rigorous conceptual toolkit for identifying ignorance as a structured phenomenon rather than an unfortunate absence of knowledge. The book equips them to diagnose why this ignorance persists, and how it serves particular interests. It offers a novel framework that integrates organizational theory alongside concrete analytical dimensions that can be applied across empirical settings. Through carefully developed concepts, illustrative cases, and a structured set of research questions, the book enables readers to move from recognizing instances of ignorance to systematically interrogating their production and effects. It also advances methodological guidance for studying ignorance, making visible dynamics that often remain obscured in conventional analyses of knowledge and decision-making. This book is intended for scholars and advanced students in organization studies, management, sociology, and political economy, as well as researchers interested in knowledge, power, and institutions. It also speaks to practitioners who seek to better understand the role of ignorance in shaping organizational outcomes and public life.