Actors in data-intensive industries at times deliberately induce and reproduce organizational ignorance by engaging in over-production of data. This observation leads the paper to make two claims. First, members of these industries fetishize data excess not in order to reduce, but in order to reproduce and stabilize organizational ignorance. Second, in this process of fetishization, organizational ignorance gives rise to forms of collective effervescence similar to that found in totemistic religions. This effervescence allows organizational actors to draw defining lines around that which is marked as awe-inspiring, dangerous and off-limits, namely the sacred. In reviewing organizational ignorance from the perspective of the sacred, this paper proposes that, paradoxically, contemporary forms of data creation allow companies and industries to organize themselves around ignorance as opposed to the promise of knowledge and insight. The paper uses this theoretical proposal in order to outline the contours of an alternative ontology of organizational ignorance, one that understands this phenomenon in terms of excessive presence of data and information.
AbbottA. (2014). The problem of excess. Sociological Theory, 32(2): 1–26.
2.
AbbottJ. (2001). Data, data everywhere – and not a byte of use?Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, 4(3), 182–192.
3.
AgambenG. (2007). In praise of profanations. In G. Agamben, Profanations (pp. 73–92). New York: Zone Books.
4.
AlvessonM.SpicerA. (2012). A stupidity-based theory of organizations. Journal of Management Studies, 49, 1195–1120.
5.
AndrejevicM. (2013). Infoglut: How too much information is changing the way we think and know. London: Routledge.
6.
AndriopoulosC.GotsiM. (2017). Methods of paradox. In SmithW.LewisM.JarzabkowskiP.LangleyA. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of organizational paradox (pp. 513–527). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
7.
Anon. (1963). The data explosion. The New York Times, October22, p. 36.
8.
ArnouldE.CaylaJ. (2015). Consumer fetish: Commercial ethnography and the sovereign consumer. Organization Studies, 36, 1361–1386.
9.
BakkenT.WiikE. L. (2018). Ignorance and organization studies. Organization Studies, 39, 1109–1120.
BeathC.Becerra-FernandezI.RossJ.ShortJ. (2012). Finding value in the information explosion. MIT Sloan Management Review, 53(4), 18–20.
12.
BedfordD. (2010). Agnotology as a teaching tool: Learning climate science by studying misinformation. Journal of Geography, 109(4), 159–165.
13.
BeerD. (2016). The data analytics industry and the promises of real-time knowing: Perpetuating and deploying a rationality of speed. Journal of Cultural Economy, 10(1), 21–33.
14.
BetancourtM. (2015). The critique of digital capitalism: An analysis of the political economy of digital culture and technology. New York: Punctum Books.
15.
BoellstorffT.MaurerB. (Eds.) (2015). Data, now bigger and better!Chicago: Chicago University Press.
16.
BöhmeH. (2014). Fetishism and culture: A different theory of modernity. Berlin: de Gruyter.
17.
BoschV. (2016). Big Data in market research: Why more data does not automatically mean better information. GfK Marketing Intelligence Review, 8(2), 57–63.
18.
BothelloJ.Salles-DjelicM. L. (2018). Evolving conceptualizations of organizational environmentalism: A path generation account. Organization Studies, 39, 93–119.
19.
BoydD.CrawfordK. (2012). Critical questions for Big Data. Information, Communication & Society, 15, 662–679.
20.
BradleyN. (2007). Marketing research: Tools and technique. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
CastellionG.MarkhamS. (2013). New product failure rates: Influence of argumentum ad populum and self-interest. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 30, 976–979.
23.
CavanillasJ. M.CurryE.WahlsterW. (2016). The big data value opportunity. In CavanillasJ. M.CurryE.WahlsterW. (Eds.), New horizons for a data-driven economy (pp. 3–11). Berlin: Springer.
24.
ChiaR. (2000). Discourse analysis as organizational analysis. Organization, 7, 513–518.
25.
ChiaR.HoltR. (2007). Wisdom as learned ignorance: Integrating East-West perspectives. In KesslerE.BaileyJ. (Eds.), Handbook of organizational and managerial wisdom (pp. 505–526). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
26.
ChiaR.HoltR. (2009). Strategy without design: The silent efficacy of indirect action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
27.
ChintaguntaP.HanssensD.HauserJ. (2016). Marketing science and big data. Marketing Science, 35, 341–342.
28.
CohenM. D.MarchJ. G.OlsenJ. P. (1972). A garbage can model of organizational choice. Administrative Science Quarterly, 17, 1–25.
29.
ColemanS. (2004). The charismatic gift. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 10(2), 421–442.
30.
CroissantJ. (2014). Agnotology: Ignorance and absence, or towards a sociology of things that aren’t there. Social Epistemology, 28(1), 4–25.
31.
CourpassonD.YounesD. (2018). Double or quits: Understanding the links between secrecy and creativity in a project development process. Organization Studies, 39, 271–295.
32.
CunhaM. P.PalmaP.da CostaN. G. (2006). Fear of foresight: Knowledge and ignorance in organizational foresight. Futures, 38, 942–955.
33.
CunhaM. P.Putnaml. (2017). Paradox theory and the paradox of success. Strategic Organization, first published online: 31October31, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1177/1476127017739536.
CzarniawskaB.LöfgrenO. (Eds.) (2014). Coping with excess: How organizations, communities and individuals manage overflow. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.
36.
DaumJ. H. (2003). Intangible assets and value creation. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons.
37.
DavenportT.PrusakL. (1998). Working knowledge: How organizations manage what they know. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
38.
DeshpandeR.ZaltmanG. (1982). Factors affecting the use of market research information: A path analysis. Journal of Marketing Research, 19(1), 14–31.
39.
DouglasM. (2002/1966). Purity and danger: An analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.
40.
DoverJ. (1954). A centralized data processing system. In AIEE-IRE ‘54 (Western) Proceedings of the February 11–12, 1954, Western Computer Conference: trends in computers: automatic control and data processing (pp. 172–183). New York: ACM Publications.
41.
DurkheimÉ. (2001). The elementary forms of religious life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
42.
EbelingM. (2016). The uncanny lives of data commodities. In M. Ebeling, Healthcare and big data: Digital spectres and phantom objects (pp. 115–131). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
43.
EliadeM. (1958). Patterns of comparative religion. New York: Sheed & Ward.
44.
EllenR. (1988). Fetishism. Man, 23, 213–235.
45.
ErevellesS.FukawaN.SwayneL. (2016). Big Data in consumer analytics and the transformation of marketing. Journal of Business Research, 69, 897–904.
46.
ESOMAR. (2016). Global market research 2016: An ESOMAR industry report. Amsterdam: ESOMAR.
FeenanD. (2007). Understanding disadvantage partly through an epistemology of ignorance. Social & Legal Studies, 16, 509–531.
49.
Fernández-PintoM. (2015). Tensions in agnotology: Normativity in the studies of commercially-driven ignorance. Social Studies of Science, 45, 294–315.
50.
FrankeW. (2015). Learned ignorance: The apophatic tradition of cultivating the virtue of unknowing. In GrossM.McGoeyL. (Eds.), Routledge international handbook of ignorance studies (pp. 26–35). London: Routledge.
51.
FrickelS. (2014). Absences: Methodological note about nothing, in particular. Social Epistemology, 28(1), 86–95.
52.
FrostJ. (2012). MRS and the market research industry. (Interview with Jane Frost, CEO of the Market Research Society, August 2012). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xc1zelhAt2A (accessed 17 March 2017).
53.
GaudetJ. (2013). It takes two to tango: Knowledge mobilization and ignorance mobilization in science research and innovation. Prometheus, 31, 169–187.
54.
GellesD.TabuchiH.DolanM. (2015). Weak car software becomes the weak spot under the hood. New York Times, 26September, p. BU1.
GrandclementC. (2011). Convoking the consumer in person: The focus group effect. In ZwickD.CaylaJ. (Eds.), Inside marketing: Ideologies, practices, devices (pp. 87–114). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
GravesP. (2013). Consumerology: The truth about consumers and the psychology of shopping. London: Nicholas Brealey.
59.
GreyC.CostasJ. (2014). Bringing secrecy into the open: Towards a theorization of the social processes of organizational secrecy. Organization Studies, 35, 1423–1447.
60.
GrossM. (2012). ‘Objective culture’ and the development of nonknowledge: Georg Simmel and the reverse side of knowing. Cultural Sociology, 6, 422–437.
61.
GrossM.McGoeyL. (2015). Introduction. In GrossM.McGoeyL. (Eds.), Routledge international handbook of ignorance studies (pp. 1–14). London: Routledge.
62.
GrovesR. (2011). Three eras of survey research. Public Opinion Quarterly, 75, 861–871.
63.
GuitardE. (2017). The sacred king as a waste heap in northern Cameroon. Journal of Material Culture. First published 4 August 2017 (accessed 13 August 2017).
64.
GurvitchG. (1971). The social frameworks of knowledge. Oxford: Blackwell.
65.
HalpernO. (2015). Beautiful data: A history of vision and reason since 1945. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
HarawayD. (1988). Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of the partial perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575–599.
68.
HarveyM.NovicevicM.BuckleyM. R.FerrisG. (2001). A historic perspective on organizational ignorance. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 16(6), 449–468.
69.
HauserR. (2017). A life in sociology. Annual Review of Sociology, 43, 1–18.
70.
HellandP. (2011). If you have too much data, then ‘good enough’ is good enough. Communications of the ACM, 54(6), 40–47.
71.
HighC. (2015). Ignorant bodies and the dangers of shamanism in Amazonia. In DilleyR.KirschT. G. (Eds.), Regimes of Ignorance: Anthropological perspectives on the reproduction of non-knowledge (pp. 91–114). New York: Berghahn Books.
72.
HighC.KellyA.MairJ. (Eds.) (2012). The anthropology of ignorance: An ethnographic approach. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
73.
IedemaR. (2007). On the multi-modality, materiality and contingency of organizational discourse. Organization Studies, 28, 931–946.
74.
IsrailidisJ. (2013). Ignorance management: An alternative perspective on knowledge management. PhD thesis, Loughborough University, UK.
75.
KareshM. (2003). The cultivation and trust-based application of tacit knowledge within a product development organization. PhD, University of Chicago, Department of Sociology.
76.
KellerK. L.ApériaT.GeorgsonM. (2008). Strategic brand management: A European perspective. Harlow, UK: Pearson Education.
77.
KennedyH.HillR. L. (2018). The feeling of numbers: Emotions in everyday engagements with data and their visualizations. Sociology, 52, 830–848.
78.
KirschT.DilleyR. (2015). Regimes of ignorance: An introduction. In KirschT.DilleyR. (Eds.), Regimes of ignorance: Anthropological perspectives on the production and reproduction of non-knowledge (pp. 1–29). New York: Berghahn.
79.
KlapperJ. (Ed.) (1957). The machine revolution in the processing of data. Public Opinion Quarterly, 21, 410–413.
80.
Koro-LjungbergM.CirellM. A.GongB.TesarM. (2017). The importance of small form: ‘Minor’ data and ‘BIG’ neoliberalism. In DenzinN. K.GiardinaM. D. (Eds.), Qualitative inquiry in neoliberal times (pp. 59–72). New York: Routledge.
81.
LaceyR. (1986). Ford: The men and the machine. London: Heinemann.
82.
LangeA.-C. (2016). Organizational ignorance: An ethnographic study of high-frequency trading. Economy & Society, 45, 230–250.
83.
LatourB. (1999). The slight surprise of action: Fact, fetishes, factishes. In B. Latour, Pandora’s hope: Essays on the reality of science studies (pp. 266–292). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
84.
LawJ. (2004). After method: mess in social science research. London: Routledge.
85.
LuhrmannT. M. (1989). The magic of secrecy. Ethos, 17, 131–165.
86.
MartinB. (2014). Constructing and investigating absences in knowledge. Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective, 3(5), 73–81.
MillerC. (2018). The death of the gods: The new global power grab. London: Heinemann.
95.
MillerP. V. (2017). Is there a future for surveys?Public Opinion Quarterly, 81(Special Issue), 205–211.
96.
MonceyP. (2016). Call for papers: Challenges in accurately measuring public opinion. www.mrs.org.uk/pdf/ijmrcall.pdf (accessed 14 November 2016).
97.
MoormanC.DeshpandeR.ZaltmanG. (1993). Factors affecting trust in market research relationship. Journal of Marketing, 57(1): 81–101.
98.
MoormanC.ZaltmanG.DeshpandeR. (1992). Relationships between providers and users of market research: The dynamics of trust within and between organizations. Journal of Marketing Research, 29, 314–328.
99.
MorozovE. (2013). To save everything, click here: The folly of technological solutionism. New York: PublicAffairs.
100.
MottiJ. (2000). Customer tracking: It’s not just web-site hits. Information Week, Issue 772, 7February, p. 104.
101.
NeffJ. (2007). R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Why market research just doesn’t get it. Advertising Age, 24September.
102.
NeubauerR. (2011). Neoliberalism in the information age, or vice versa? Global citizenship, technology, and hegemonic ideology. tripleC, 9(2), 195–230.
103.
NicholsW. (2013). Advertising analytics 2.0. Harvard Business Review, 91(3), 60–68.
104.
NilssonJ. (2018). Constructing consumer knowledge in market research: An ethnography of epistemics. PhD thesis, Linköping University.
105.
NorbergA. (1990). High-technology calculation in the early 20th century: Punched card machinery in business and government. Technology and Culture, 31, 753–779.
106.
NunanD.di DomenicoM. L. (2013). Market research and the ethics of Big Data. International Journal of Market Research, 55, 505–520.
107.
O’DohertyD.De CockC.RehnA.AshcraftK. L. (2013). New sites/sights: Exploring the white spaces of organization. Organization Studies, 34, 1427–1444.
OswickC.RichardsD. (2004). Talk in organizations: Local conversations, wider perspectives. Culture and Organization, 10(2), 107–124.
110.
OttoR. (1923). The idea of the holy: An inquiry into the non-rational factor in the idea of the divine and its relation to the rational. London: Humphrey Millford.
PernellK.JungJ.DobbinF. (2017). The hazards of expert control: Chief Risk Officers and risky derivatives. American Sociological Review, 82, 511–541.
113.
PhillipsN.HardyC. (2002). Discourse analysis: Investigating processes of social construction. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE Publications.
114.
PhillipsN.OswickC. (2012). Organizational discourse: Domains, debates, and directions. Academy of Management Annals, 6(1), 435–481.
115.
PietzW. (1985). The problem of the fetish, I. RES: Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics, 9, 5–17.
116.
PietzW. (1987). The problem of the fetish, II: The origin of the fetish. RES: Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics, 13, 23–45.
117.
PinkS.LanzeniD.HorstH. (2018). Data anxieties: Finding trust in everyday digital mess. Big Data & Society, early online publication: DOI: 10.1177/2053951718756685.
118.
PooleM.Van de VenA. (1989). Using paradox to build management and organization theories. Academy of Management Review, 14, 562–578.
119.
PrichardC.JonesD.StableinR. (2004). Doing research in organizational discourse: The importance of researcher context. In GrantD.HardyC.OswickC.PutnamL. (Eds.), The Sage handbook of organizational discourses (pp. 213–236). London: SAGE Publications.
120.
ProctorR.SchiebingerL. (2008). Agnotology: The making and unmaking of ignorance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
121.
RiesmanD. (1951). Some observations on social science research. Antioch Review, 11, 259–278.
122.
RobertsJ. (2013). Organizational ignorance: Towards a managerial perspective on the unknown. Management Learning, 44(3), 215–236.
123.
RobertsJ.ArmitageJ. (2008). The ignorance economy. Prometheus, 36(4), 335–354.
124.
RoweF. A. (1968). Expansion set by Sperry Rand. New York Times, 25February.
125.
SchadJ.LewisM.RaischS.SmithW. (2016). Paradox research in management science: Looking back to move forward. Academy of Management Annals, 10(1), 5–64.
126.
SchillerD. (1999). Digital capitalism: Networking the global market system. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
127.
SchneierB. (2015). Data and Goliath: The hidden battles to collect your data and control your world. New York: Norton & Company.
ScottS. (2018). A sociology of nothing: Understanding the unmarked. Sociology, 52(1), 3–19.
130.
ShenkD. (1998). Data smog: Surviving the information glut. San Francisco: Harper.
131.
ShillingC.MellorP. (1998). Durkheim, morality and modernity: Collective effervescence, homo duplex and the sources of moral action. British Journal of Sociology, 49, 193–209.
132.
SimanowskiR. (2016). Data love: The seduction and betrayal of digital technologies. New York: University of Columbia Press.
133.
SimonH. A. (1971). Designing organizations for an information-rich world. In GreenbergerM. (Ed.), Computers, communications and the public interest (pp. 40–41). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
134.
SkibbaR. (2016). Why the polls missed Trump. Nature, 539(17November), p. 339.
135.
SkieraB. (2016). Data, data and even more data: Harvesting insights from the data jungle. GfK Marketing Intelligence Review, 8(2), 11–17.
136.
SmithA. (2018). Franken-Algorithms: The deadly consequences of unpredictable code. The Guardian, 28August.
137.
SmithW. K.ErezM.JarvenpaaS.LewisM. W.TraceyP. (2017). Adding complexity to theories of paradox, tensions, and dualities of innovation and change. Organization Studies, 38, 303–317.
138.
SmithsonM. (1985). Towards a social theory of ignorance. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 15, 151–172.
139.
StephensC.SukumarR. (2006). An introduction to data mining. In GroverR.VriensM. (Eds.), The handbook of marketing research: Uses, misuses and future advances (pp. 455–483). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
140.
StohlC.StohlM. (2011). Secret agencies: The communicative constitution of a clandestine organization. Organization Studies, 32, 1197–1215.
141.
StrongC. (2014). The challenge of ‘big data’: What does it mean for the qualitative research industry?Qualitative Market Research: an International Journal, 17, 336–342.
142.
StrongC. (2015). Humanizing big data: Marketing at the meeting of data, social science and consumer insight. London: Kogan Page.
143.
SydowJ.SchreyöggG. (Eds.) (2013). Self-reinforcing processes in and among organizations. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
TsoukasH. (1997). The tyranny of light: The temptations and the paradoxes of the information society. Futures, 29, 827–843.
152.
TsoukasH.CunhaM. P. (2017). On organizational circularity: Vicious and virtuous cycles in organizing. In SmithW.LewisM.JarzabkowskiP.LangleyA. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of organizational paradox (pp. 393–412). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
153.
TuanaN. (2006). The speculum of ignorance: The women’s health movement and epistemologies of ignorance. Hypatia, 21(3), 1–19.
154.
UngarS. (2003). Misplaced metaphor: A critical analysis of the ‘Knowledge Society’. Canadian Journal of Sociology, 40, 331–347.
155.
UngarS. (2008). Ignorance as an under-identified social problem. British Journal of Sociology, 59, 301–326.
