Mikkel Flyverbom

The politics of transparency and the calibration of knowledge in the digital age

This article analyses the complex work of human actors and technologies that goes into producing that which appears to us as ‘transparent’. Drawing on studies of governance and surveillance, affordance theory, actor-network theory and sociological work on numbers, we analyse the role played by mediating technologies in the production of transparency and relate it to the question of how knowledge is created, recycled and modified in organizational settings. This perspective is largely absent from existing research on transparency, which construes transparency as unmediated or fails to investigate the organizing properties of specific mediating technologies. We argue that mediating technologies, conceptualized here as disclosure devices, have distinctive organizing properties that are important to scrutinize. They play a central role in attempts to shed light on objects, subjects and practices, and to help build or break up relationships within and across sites and organizations. We focus on three disclosure devices and their respective knowledge creation processes: (a) due diligence, whose emphasis is on qualitative knowledge production; (b) rankings, which is about quantitative knowledge production; (c) big data analysis, which underscores algorithmic knowledge production. We conceptualize the distinct features of these disclosure devices, indicate ways in which they shape organizational processes and discuss some of the ethical and political challenges they pose.

Sunlight in cyberspace? On transparency as a form of ordering

While we witness a growing belief in transparency as an ideal solution to a wide range of societal problems, we know less about the practical workings of transparency as it guides conduct in organizational and regulatory settings. This article argues that transparency efforts involve much more than the provision of information and other forms of ‘sunlight’, and are rather a matter of managing visibilities than providing insight and clarity. Building on actor-network theory and Foucauldian governmentality studies, it calls for careful attention to the ways in which transparency ideals are translated into more situated practices and become associated with specific organizational and regulatory concerns. The article conceptualizes transparency as a force that shapes conduct in organizational and socio-political domains. In the second section, this conceptualization of transparency as a form of ‘ordering’ is substantiated further by using illustrations of the effects of transparency efforts in the internet domain.

Introduction: Logics of transparency in late modernity Paradoxes, mediation and governance

This special issue of the European Journal of Social Theory investigates the phenomenon of transparency, including the spectacle that accompanies transparency projects launched by contemporary organizations and institutions, be they public, private or inbetweens. The title ‘Logics of transparency in late modernity: paradoxes, mediation and governance’ alludes to the historicity of the transparency ideal, its paradoxes, forms of mediation and governing potentials. Within and across the five articles included in this volume we address questions such as the following: What is the historical and epistemological background to contemporary preoccupations with transparency? What is the role of the media and knowledge processes in the production of transparency? What kinds of politics are involved in the concerted focus on transparency? And, more generally, how can we theorize the current manifestations, potentialities and limits of transparency? Our endeavor is largely conceptual and comes with a normative challenge, which is important to address upfront. Many contemporary societal projects, ranging from the democratization of governments and organizations to the promotion and implementation of corporate social responsibility initiatives, generally assume that transparency can effectively steer individual and collective behavior towards desirable objectives. These objectives include holding elected or appointed public officers accountable, and making

Organizational Transparency Conceptualizations, Conditions, and Consequences

Transparency is an increasingly prominent area of research that offers valuable insights for organizational studies. However, conceptualizations of transparency are rarely subject to critical scrutiny and thus their relevance remains unclear. In most accounts, transparency is associated with the sharing of information and the perceived quality of the information shared. This narrow focus on information and quality, however, overlooks the dynamics of organizational transparency. To provide a more structured conceptualization of organizational transparency, this article unpacks the assumptions that shape the extant literature, with a focus on three dimensions: conceptualizations, conditions, and consequences. The contribution of the study is twofold: (a) On a conceptual level, we provide a framework that articulates two paradigmatic positions underpinning discussions of transparency, verifiability approaches and performativity approaches; (b) on an analytical level, we suggest a novel future research agenda for studying organizational transparency that pays attention to its dynamics, paradoxes, and performative characteristics.

The Transparency–Power Nexus Observational and Regularizing Control

Although transparency is often believed to mitigate the negative effects of power by providing access to the hidden sides of organizational and political life, extant research fails to specify how transparency more fundamentally relates to power. To make sense of this relationship, this article develops an analytical language along two dimensions: “observational control” and “regularizing control.” Within this framework, we look at (a) attempts to carry out control through observation, (b) identity-oriented forms of normative control, (c) strategically ambiguous articulations of transparency, and (d) attempts to normalize and institutionalize behavior across organizational settings through the use of reporting and ranking systems. In the concluding section, we discuss how our conceptualization might nuance and enrich future studies of the transparency–power nexus and we point to some important implications for management practitioners.

The Spectacle and Organization Studies

The aim of this essay is to revisit Guy Debord’s critical theory of the spectacle as formulated 50 years ago in the ‘Society of the Spectacle’ in light of the contemporary production of spectacles. Debord’s arguments about appearance, visibility and celebrity are echoed in the way organizations increasingly focus on their brand, image, impression, and reputation. Yet, the role of spectacles in organizational life has remained under-researched in organization studies. As the boundaries between fact and fiction, reality and representation, substance and appearance become increasingly blurred, questions about the production and effects of spectacles seem more pertinent than ever. Are representations faithful mirrors of reality, or attempts to conceal reality? Do they replace reality, or bring new realities into being? By articulating three possible understandings of the spectacle, as fetishism, hyper-reality or performativity, this essay invites organization scholars to examine the organization of the real and the making of organizations through processes of spectacular representation including discursive practices, visual images and theatrical performances.

Big data as governmentality in international development: Digital traces, algorithms, and altered visibilities

ABSTRACT Statistics have long shaped the field of visibility for the governance of development projects. The introduction of big data has altered the field of visibility. Employing Deans “analytics of government” framework, we analyze two cases—malaria tracking in Kenya and monitoring of food prices in Indonesia. Our analysis shows that big data introduces a bias toward particular types of visualizations. What problems are being made visible through big data depends to some degree on how the underlying data is visualized and who is captured in the visualizations. It is also influenced by technical factors such as distance between mobile phone towers and the truth claims that gain legitimacy.

Globalization as it happens: on globalizing assemblages in tax planning

Globalization is usually understood as a structural, epochal condition altering the environment in which people, organizations, and societies operate. But such accounts offer little insight into the infrastructures, practices, and connections that facilitate the production of the global. This article uses findings from an ethnographic study of tax planning to show how mundane practices and connectivities forge and organize global operations, and to argue for the value of analyzing processes of globalization in terms of assemblages and infrastructures. Empirically, the article captures how the making of ‘tax structures’ involves connecting, for instance, buildings in France, a human in Switzerland, a company in Denmark, various tax laws, a trust fund in New Zealand, and large amounts of money on the move. If studied along the lines of an analytics of ‘globalizing assemblages’, such financial objects can help us capture how the global is produced and navigated in finance and beyond. By engaging with these questions, the article contributes conceptually, methodologically, and empirically to current attempts at rethinking globalization, and provides novel insights into the practices and entanglements involved in globalized and globalizing financial activities.

Beyond The Black Box

This paper argues that the dichotomization of technological determinism and social constructivism in parts of the literature on the technology‐society nexus conceals that the two approaches study different objects. On the backdrop of the argument that technological determinists concern themselves with material aspects and social constructivists with ideational aspects of the relationship between technology and society, the paper presents two alternative approaches, which provide a focus on both materiality and ideation. Finally, the paper exemplifies briefly the relevance of this approach for investigations of the governance of new information‐ and communication technologies, such as the Internet.

Datastructuring—Organizing and curating digital traces into action

Digital transformations and processes of “datafication” fundamentally reshape how information is produced, circulated and given meaning. In this article, we provide a concept of “datastructuring” which seeks to capture this reshaping as both a product of and productive of social activity. To do this we focus on (1) how new forms of social action map onto and are enabled by technological changes related to datafication, and (2) how new forms of datafied social action constitute a form of knowledge production which becomes embedded in technologies themselves. We illustrate the potential of the datastructuring concept with empirical examples which also serve to highlight some new avenues for research and some empirical questions to explore further. We suggest a focus on datastructuring can ignite scholarly debates across disciplines that may share an interest in the technological configurations, sorting activities, and other socio-material forces that shape digital spaces, but which are rarely brought together. Such cross-disciplinary conceptualizations may give more attention to how information is structured and organized, becomes “algorithmically recognizable”, and emerges as (in)visible in digital, datafied spaces. Such a concept, we suggest, may help us better understand the novel ways in which “backstage datawork” and “data sorting processes” gain traction in political interventions, commercial processes, and social ordering.