FGV EAESP Sao Paulo School of Business Administration, Brazil
Corporate Social Irresponsibility (CSiR) is an intentional organizational practice that affects negatively stakeholders and continues to harm society. However, some managers and organizations appear unaffected and deliberately engage in, neglect, overlook, or disregard information that might cause harm. I refer to such practices as Organizational Ignorance (OI) that perpetrate intentional and harmful irresponsible behavior. This article argues that Organizational Ignorance (OI) is a managerial practice that helps organizations deal with CSiR. OI enriches CSiR literature analyzing how organizations assume knowable risks concealing information from stakeholders are pervasive in CSiR events helping them to advance new forms of rectification. Using a qualitative case study and documental data, this article analyzes an oil leak at a petrochemical site that caused 93 deaths to answer the following question: How Organizational Ignorance (OI) perpetuate CSiR? The coding process resulted in three themes that cover two distinct temporal timeframes. The results demonstrate that engaging in OI allows the company’s immunity for CSiR practices which adds a new dimension to Clark’s et. al (2022) CSiR Framework namely “Rectification in the company’s terms”. This new dimension occurs amid a context of repression that imposed an agenda of avoid responsibility resulting in extended harm scenario.
