Functions of Ignorance in Introducing Automation

Abstract

Since Weber, most sociologists who have studied formal organizations have been concerned with their rational and/or legal dimensions. To be sure, analyses of latent consequences, bureaucratic pathology, informal structures, staff-line conflicts, and so on have broadened the scope of the Weberian model. Yet, the basis of the model of bureaucracy, the rational/ legal system, is still the major focus.' Bureaucracies are generally conceived as structures of differential amounts of knowledge and expertise coordinated for the production of a good or service. However, all positions in a formal organization are limited to the knowledge specified by the formal duties, rights, responsibilities, and rewards implicated in each position. The division of labor implies not only knowledge but also notions about what people need not know and are not supposed to know. Thus, formal organizations can be seen as models of differential amounts of ignorance, or better yet, as structures of both knowledge and ignorance. Yet, ignorance as an explicit area of empirical concern is relatively dormant in sociology.2 We are concerned in this paper with some ways by which people deliberately attempt to keep others ignorant and how ignorance functions to protect existing statuses.3 Our focus is on the installation of an electronic