Dealing with knowledge and ignorance in organizations

For most researchers thoughts on knowledge and ignorance have its seeds in the ancient Greek philosophy. Socrates respectively Plato, were the first who addressed the relationship of knowledge and ignorance with the well-known quotation: “I know that I know nothing”. This philosophical idea is also an experience almost everyone has made by his or her own. The aim of the presentation is to investigate the blind spot on how experts – who already possess comprehensive knowledge – deal with things they know and the things they do not know. On one side, there still exist a lot of phenomena that cannot be explained by research, on the other side it takes a long time to establish a new body of knowledge because of rejecting new insights. Using the case of experts, I will present four different dimensions of ignorance and give some empirical insights on how individual and organizational aspects influence dealing with knowledge and ignorance.