By Oana B. Albu & Mikkel Flyverbom

Blog Editor’s note: Oana’s & Mikkel’s work, “Organizational Transparency: Conceptualizations, Conditions, and Consequences”, is a finalist for Business & Society’s 2019 Best Paper. The paper is open access until February 26th, 2021.

In our article, nominated for the 2019 Business & Society Best Paper Award, we point out that transparency is often understood as a simple matter of handing out more information, and that this narrow focus overlooks complex communication processes that also create new realities. For instance, the leaks of computer analyst Edward Snowden not only provided information about the doings of the U.S. intelligence agencies, but also fundamentally changed U.S. diplomatic relations around the world. We make the case for a distinction between two analytical positions (verifiability and performativity) because this helps us to achieve a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of transparency.

On the one hand, recognizing that transparency is a matter of information disclosure has to do with verifiability. This means that the quality and quantity of information can help us see what organizations do. Improving the effectiveness and quality of transparency efforts might allow us to solve organizational and societal problems. Performativity, on the other hand, means thinking of transparency as a process that induces social action. In this view, we zoom into the conflicts and negotiations that arise from managing how one appears to be transparent to different audiences.

The Snowden revelations help us understand the value of this distinction between verifiability and performativity when it comes to transparency. Through news media, Snowden leaked classified documents that revealed the mass surveillance activities of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). This can be understood as disclosure in the name of transparency. From a verifiability standpoint, these disclosures verify the existence of (what Snowden considered to be) societal ills, such as state secrets, lack of public deliberation about military strategies, state snooping, and their hidden effects. In many ways, this case lives up to the promise of transparency suggested by verifiability approaches: If information is disclosed, then we see what the state is really like, and we are in a position to take action accordingly. Transparency then becomes a matter of demonstrating via disclosure that something is true and accurate.

In contrast, a performativity reading of the Snowden cases invites us to consider the complications at play in transparency projects. One starting point is to think of these cases as complex negotiations and communication processes between individuals that are mediated by technological infrastructures rather than simple disclosures. For example, the material disclosed by Snowden is not a simple reflection of the NSA surveillance program, but a partial selection based on ‘very selective judgments’. The way this material gets distributed—as an information dump in a database or via a carefully managed editorial process—has consequences for what becomes visible and what remains out of sight. The collaborations made with journalists and the mediations facilitated by publishing houses must be kept in mind, as this leads to an understanding of transparency as being far more than a matter of simply leaking information. A performativity approach, then, considers the collaborations and technological infrastructures and how these affect sharing of data.

The revelations by Snowden were possible because new technologies allow for the distribution and cross-referencing of massive amounts of files, and these infrastructures are as important to keep in mind as the information circulated. Moreover, a verifiability approach assumes an audience that is willing and able to understand the disclosed information perfectly. But this glosses over the intricate ways in which interpretation works and the choices made by different audiences. Transparency projects therefore do not simply reveal through disclosure; they also involve complex communication processes that produce new organizational realities; that is, they are performative.

Ultimately, what verifiability and performativity standpoints do is to help organizations, stakeholder groups, and policy makers be cautious about simply equating more information with better conduct. Such distinction allows us to take note of the complications, negotiations, and conflicts generated by transparency projects. This means focusing on how communication processes, technologies, and social practices mediate and shape transparency efforts.

Reference:

Albu, O.B., & Flyverbom, M. 2010. Organizational Transparency: Conceptualizations, Conditions, and Consequences. Business & Society, 58(2):268-297.