“Fools” with Impossible Goals: Mobilizing March’s Technology of Foolishness to Tackle Grand Challenges
Carnegie goes to California: Advancing and Celebrating the Work of James G. March
ISBN: 978-1-80043-979-5, eISBN: 978-1-80043-978-8
Publication date: 26 October 2021
Abstract
James March argued that irrational approaches to problem solving and foolishness can be useful for addressing complex problems. Grand challenges are complex problems that often involve “guarded societal institutions” – societal beliefs and practices guarded by political or commercial powers. To explain how organizations with impossible goals dismantle such institutions by mobilizing irrationality and foolishness, we develop a process model which is illustrated with the case of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Our main contribution is to expand James March’s ideas on logics of action and organizational intelligence to advance a novel perspective for tackling big societal problems. We argue that foolishness is not only a means for finding distant solutions to complex problems but also a means for generating sustained motivation, well-being, and ideas that spark debate and lead to the questioning of taken-for-granted societal beliefs.
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Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments
We thank Christine Beckman for excellent editorial guidance and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful and constructive comments. We also thank PETA employees in Los Angeles and Norfolk for their generative comments. Special thanks to Kenneth Montville and Simon Plazolles-Hayes for helping secure the license of PETA photos and video stills in the Appendices. This paper is part of a larger project on PETA. We gratefully acknowledge helpful and constructive comments from Marlys Christianson, Sally Maitlis, John Lafkas, Mike Pratt, and Tim Vogus. We also acknowledge with gratitude the financial support provided by the Ivey Business School, Surrey Business School, and Frankfurt School of Finance and Management. The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this paper. The order of authorship is alphabetical.
Citation
Hu, Y. and Rerup, C. (2021), "“Fools” with Impossible Goals: Mobilizing March’s Technology of Foolishness to Tackle Grand Challenges", Beckman, C.M. (Ed.) Carnegie goes to California: Advancing and Celebrating the Work of James G. March (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 76), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 97-128. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X20210000076005
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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