The Stupidity Paradox: The Power and Pitfalls of Functional Stupidity at Work

Mats Alvesson · André Spicer

Jun 2016 · Profile Books

About this ebook

Functional stupidity can be catastrophic. It can cause organisational collapse, financial meltdown and technical disaster. And there are countless, more everyday examples of organisations accepting the dubious, the absurd and the downright idiotic, from unsustainable management fads to the cult of leadership or an over-reliance on brand and image. And yet a dose of stupidity can be useful and produce good, short-term results: it can nurture harmony, encourage people to get on with the job and drive success. This is the stupidity paradox.

The Stupidity Paradox tackles head-on the pros and cons of functional stupidity. You'll discover what makes a workplace mindless, why being stupid might be a good thing in the short term but a disaster in the longer term, and how to make your workplace a little less stupid by challenging thoughtless conformity. It shows how harmony and action in the workplace can be balanced with a culture of questioning and challenge.

The book is a wake-up call for smart organisations and smarter people. It encourages us to use our intelligence fully for the sake of personal satisfaction, organisational success and the flourishing of society as a whole.

Ratings and reviews

I highly recommend this book. I'm still not certain whether the authors were conducting a cynical email exchange that then turned into this book, or whether they genuinely hold the view that functional stupidity is a valid frame of analysis, but I'm certainly of the latter mind. The authors collect discussions of several well-known cognitive biases (Langer, Abelson, Kahneman, Tversky, Abbott etc) and gather them under the umbrella of functional stupidity. Stupidity is used as the non-application of critical thinking, whether purposefully or unconsciously. They explain the exploitation of these biases in the context of human myth-creation and culturally enforced social scripts, that is: structural and normative organizational trends. The 'functional' part has to do with the utility of stupidity in many workplace contexts. They define, analyse and exemplify functional stupidity, its purpose and limits, and end with some prescriptions for dealing with it. Overall, I found the read enjoyable, the insights useful. I come away from the reading experience with a smile on my face and a feeling of having gleaned a new perspective that integrates the lessons from Hararis "Sapiens" with Kahnemans "Thinking fast and slow". It presciently puts the Google memo, Cambridge analytica & facebook, Twitterbanning and the weird discussions around Bitcoin, Tesla and JB Peterson into a framework of functional stupidity that makes these, and more, phenomena easier to understand and discuss. One thing that could enhance a 2nd ed. might be a philosphical foreword by Zizek, or perhaps a more businessminded one by Erixson and Weigel... Worth the price, worth the time.

About the author

Mats Alvesson is Professor of Business Administration at the University of Lund, Sweden. He has published extensively across a wide range of organisational behaviour topics and issues, is one of the most frequently cited European researchers in management and a sought-after speaker and commentator around the globe. André Spicer is Professor of Organisational Behaviour at Cass Business School, City University, London, known for his thought leadership in the areas of the human side of work, leadership and ethics. He is widely published in both academic literature and the general business media and is a frequent commentator on sustainable business, behaviours at work and business culture.