Managerial Ignorance: A Study of How Managers Organise for Creativity

Abstract: Creativity has become a key issue for managers and scholars alike. Creativity, however, is a complex and multi-levelled phenomenon. The significance of creativity and its complexity beg the question of how managers organise for creativity and how they address tensions linked to their organising attempts. Based on an interpretive methodology the book investigates these questions and explores different ways of organising for creativity. A salient empirical observation is that managers address contradictions related to ways of organising for creativity by wilfully ignoring them. It is suggested that such acts of wilful managerial ignorance enable the projection of an appropriate external image and the maintenance of a favourable self-image. The need for managerial ignorance, it is further argued, stems from a wider discourse on the “creative economy” which illustrates how the pressure to manage creativity has become part of everyday managerial work.