From Universalizing Transparency to the Interplay of Transparency Matrices: Critical insights from the emerging social credit system in China

Hansen, Hans Krause; Weiskopf, Richard B.

doi:10.1177/0170840619878474

Cited by 26 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 87 publications

(130 reference statements)

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“…Our agency or ‘free will’ is a sacred right to many, but can lead to intentional resistance (Newlands, 2020) and ultimately can make the world a dangerous place. The debate about who decides how much digital surveillance is ‘good for you’ is likely to continue, especially in relation to multifaceted and other new forms of surveillance (Hansen & Weiskopf, 2019). We have witnessed societies that favour freedom over all else, but in doing so have sacrificed the ability to act collectively with a common purpose to keep individuals and sub-groups feeling safe.…”

Section: In This Issuementioning

confidence: 99%

Connectivity in and around Organizations: Waves, tensions and trade-offs

Kolb

Dery

Huysman³

et al. 2020

Organization Studies

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Connectivity has become the foundation for organizing as it increasingly underpins and defines the way we live and work. Notwithstanding all the advances in connectivity within organizations, there are even more pervasive changes between and around organizations. In a digital world, more and more of us are working anytime/anyplace, and companies deliver value by better connecting with customers and external partners within digital ecosystems. In this introduction to the Special Issue, we summarize four waves of connectivity-globalization, socialization, personalization and datafication—that combine to create opportunities and challenges for contemporary organizations. We then introduce the papers in the Special Issue and discuss their contributions to theory and practice. Finally, we draw upon currently emerging challenges to suggest enduring tensions and trade-offs for connectivity research in the future.

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Section: In This Issuementioning

confidence: 99%

Connectivity in and around Organizations: Waves, tensions and trade-offs

Kolb

Dery

Huysman³

et al. 2020

Organization Studies

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“…While there are different tools at hand, each of them can only make visible some aspects of an organization while leaving others out (e.g. Ananny & Crawford, 2018; Hansen, 2015; Hansen & Weiskopf, 2019). For example, ‘disclosure devices’ (Hansen & Flyverbom, 2015) such as documents and personal meetings used in a due diligence process produce transparency and accountability in a narrative form that is closely bound to individuals and the specific context of its production.…”

Section: Critical Perspective: Transparency Clouds Accountabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In contrast, research that takes a critical perspective argues that the relation between the two concepts is more complex and that any form of transparency can only ever create incomplete accountability (e.g. Hansen & Flyverbom, 2015;Hansen & Weiskopf, 2019;Heimstädt, 2017;Ringel, 2019). Both perspectives have contributed significantly to our understanding of 'visibility management' (Flyverbom, 2020) in and around organizations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transparency and Accountability: Causal, Critical and Constructive Perspectives

Heimstädt

Dobusch

2020

Organization Theory

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Given the excessive power of Google and other large technology firms, transparency and accountability have turned into matters of great concern for organization scholars. So far, most studies adopt either a causal or critical perspective on the relationship between the two concepts. These perspectives are pitted against each other but share some basic assumptions – a fact which limits organization theory’s ability to fully grasp the management of (digital) visibilities. To address these limitations, we therefore propose a third, constructive perspective on these concepts. A constructive perspective turns transparency and accountability from analytic resources into topics of inquiry, allowing organization scholars to study how people in and around organizations put them to work and with what consequences. We introduce sites of ethical contestation as a new methodological strategy to conduct surprising and unintuitive empirical research from a constructive perspective.

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“…They inevitably invite critique, because they invoke opinion rather than objective fact and act as a form of “visibility management” (Flyverbom, 2016, p. 99; Yeung, 2005). From this perspective, the production, meaning, and significance of transparency depend on mediated interactions , many of which are generated through publicity, and an important organizational risk associated with transparency is its dependence on sense-making in context (Hansen & Weiskopf, 2019). Interpretations of organizational claims remain fundamental to transparency’s ontology so that the outcome of transparency efforts can never be certain (Fenster, 2006; Flyverbom, 2016).…”

Section: Transparencymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To understand these dynamics, we need to engage with hybridity in practice. Hansen and Weiskopf (2019) argue that the complexity of transparency can be understood as a set of transparency matrices: different, coexisting modes of transparency that take the idea in different directions. Transparency matrices are context-dependent and heterogeneous because they depend on mediated observations; that is, different ways in which the material context enables a particular form of visibility.…”

Section: Getting Beyond the Dichotomy: Transparency-publicity Matricesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transparency, Publicity, Democracy, and Markets: Inhabiting Tensions Through Hybridity

Edwards

2020

American Behavioral Scientist

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In this article, I explore the relationship between transparency and publicity, and consider how the links between the two ideas might be reconceptualized to make better sense of their empirical reality. Both transparency and publicity have acquired a normative power as management ideas that govern all kinds of organizations—political, commercial, nonprofit, and public sector. Transparency is normatively associated with ensuring accountability of those who govern (whether politically or economically) to those they are governing, while publicity is a strategic act motivated primarily by self-interest: to engage in publicity is to make visible something that one desires to be seen in a particular way in order to reap the benefits of that perception. The result of these normative associations is that transparency and publicity are often understood as conceptually opposed and incommensurate concepts. In this article, I challenge this dichotomy and suggest that, given the empirical reality of their application by organizations, it is more productive to understand the concepts as a transparency–publicity hybrid, rather than separate ideas. By investigating the empirical connections between transparency and what might be termed promotional publicity, new and more productive thinking about the effects of their interaction on organizations can develop.

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From Universalizing Transparency to the Interplay of Transparency Matrices: Critical insights from the emerging social credit system in China

Cited by 26 publications

References 87 publications

Connectivity in and around Organizations: Waves, tensions and trade-offs

Connectivity in and around Organizations: Waves, tensions and trade-offs

Transparency and Accountability: Causal, Critical and Constructive Perspectives

Transparency, Publicity, Democracy, and Markets: Inhabiting Tensions Through Hybridity

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