ABSTRACT
Organisations do not only learn, they also unlearn, forget, and leave certain things in the sphere of organisational ignorance. Inspired by the claims that NGOs have a particular tendency to forget and be unable to learn from their past, the chapter introduces the notions of organisational forgetting and ignorance and provides illustrative empirical examples of their occurrence. It identifies personnel turnover, an activist culture and accountability as elements contributing to organisational forgetting, and shows how organisational memory systems and their use as well internal power relations and organisational identity play roles especially in forgetting how to be a global organisation. It also shows how NGO ignorance is constructed vis-á-vis uncertainty in development, unpleasant issues and everyday practice in the field. The chapter argues that organisational forgetting and ignorance support learning at level I rather than critical reflection and change of the strategies and assumptions, and thus contribute to reproduction of the institutional features of development.
