This paper shows that learning about how your firm works is equivalent to gaining Lovecraftian Secret Knowledge. Promising managers asked to do process redesign at their firm learn how messed up it all is, so they give up rising careers & become hermits at the edges of the firm

What causes people to make a sanity check is when they learn that the features of their organization are not, in fact, part of a Grand Plan, but rather socially constructed, random, & in flux. The highlighted quote says it all.

Official link (paywalled): https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/orsc.2018.1277?journalCode=orsc">https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/1...

For those interested in the details (or frustrated by the paywall), there is a great summary of the research and implications in HBR, as @ellahafermalz found! https://hbr.org/2019/12/can-you-know-too-much-about-your-organization">https://hbr.org/2019/12/c...