Ignoring Warnings: How Ambiguity and De-Ambiguity Juggling Enable Organizational Passivity (WITHDRAWN)

Published research exhibits an increasing interest in the ‘other side of knowledge’ by focusing on issues such as how individuals and organizations wilfully can avoid information and knowledge to escape liability, and how they deliberately can amplify ambiguity to prevent others from knowing about them and thus avoid scrutiny. Yet, the literature to date does not answer how actors receiving repeated warnings about organizational problems can behave to avoid responsibility for addressing and thus remain passive in relation to the warnings. We theorize how such passivity can be accomplished through the combination and juggling with de-ambiguating and ambiguating framings, which imply selective reduction and amplification of ambiguity of warnings, their target and carriers, and their context. We develop an empirically substantiated model outling the mutually supporting relationship between a set of such framings (passivity tactics and lubricating worldviews), which contributes to the literature on wilful ignoring and strategic ambiguity, silencing and whistleblowing, and the maintainence of committment in organizations. Several avenues for future research are identified, and practical limplications outlined.