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This study fires shots on the irony of corporate stupidity in the 21st century. The present study reveals that corporate functional stupidity is viral among both smart and non-smart corporations leader, small and big corporations- capitalizing on leadership and intra-organizational power dynamics and the level of imbalances in authority between those leading and those being led leadership-follower matrix. The practice by corporates, especially leadership from within, to ‘construct and build huge’ systems of communicative blockades ear-marked at blind-folding and encourage employees to accept demonic and exploitative work practices as a prerequisite for corporate survival is ontologically surprising and a major cause for concern. This stupidity paradox in corporations spear-headed by leaders advances the notion that power dynamics and imbalances in authority at work places create stupid leaders who represents a distinctive form of cognitive failing. Paradoxically, modern corporations appear more stupidified from within. Stupidity is here viewed as functional and is understood definitively as a form of conceptual self-hampering, characterized by aetiology and with a range of delirious effects on both individuals at work and corporate performance at the other extreme. Functional stupidity, is in its entirety an “active refusal of using one’s intellectual capacity in other than myopic ways” and leadership. The present study is a product of the researcher’s quest and thirst for ontological perspectives in determining, what characterizes stupidity and determine the emancipatory models that are needed to contain the over-acculturalization of the practice. The primary research question posits and examines the salient characteristics of corporate functional stupidity. Together with other secondary questions, this question raises issues focused on interventions (stupidity management) leaders can make to drive down levels of stupidity in their corporates and make their organizations less stupid. A mixed methodological design is adopted in order to comprehend the ontology of functional stupidity as well as the original episteme of the same. This is done by reviewing existing literature on functional stupidity, with observatory and experiential knowledge obtainable from the researcher’s work experience. The employment of discourse analysis and content merging of other studies conducted elsewhere is becomes the pedal for data analysis. The primary finding is that corporate stupidity can translate into a dangerous sense of futility that prompts even the brightest employees to abandon objectivity and silently accept absurd tasks. Corporate stupidity is a common hazard in many companies but paradoxically enough-it can prove useful to maintaining a certain degree of cohesion. Study further shows that stupid leadership attempts to structure individuals' internal conversations in ways that emphasize positive and coherent narratives and marginalize more negative or ambiguous ones. Stupid leaders throw up a variety of communicative blockades that encourage employees to accept bad practices as an inevitability of life in the particular organizational ontology within which they find themselves. The study further perspective is that many corporations are caught in the stupidity paradox: they employ smart people who end up doing stupid things. This can produce good results in the short term, but can pave the way to disaster in the longer term. Paradoxically, the study reveals that when people are seized by functional stupidity, they remain capable of doing the job, but they stop asking searching questions about their work, get over possessed with loyalism and loose creativity and innovation. Smart corporations encourage stupidity that this pays off in the short term, but creates problems in the long term. The study recommends that systematic de-stupification and denaturalization of corporate leadership discourse is a necessary undertaking. The creation of deliberate innovative support cultures cannot be over-emphasized. The study unapologetically stands and proposes very practical steps that can be used to destupidify our corporations. Future research need to be contacted focusing on the benefits of creating stupid corporations whose stupidity manifests through the behaviour of its leaders. This study is not complete until further study is conducted across all corporates to deduce how stupidity can be transformed into both medium and long term benefits to the corporation.
Dr Milton Gwakwa - (Sun,) studied this question.