Start Date
11-12-2016 12:00 AM
Description
This paper unpacks the performativity of transparency inside the organization. Organizational members often use digital technologies to make their actions visible to others in the organization. However, practices of visibility produce opaqueness as much as transparency. In our qualitative study in a telecommunications organization, organizational members sometimes made their actions transparent to their colleagues and managers, while at other times they played numbers games and made their actions opaque. We take a sociomaterial perspective and investigate how practices of visibility are performed by organizational members while using digital technologies. We consider the temporality of visibility making practices, to better understand how they emerge and how they produce transparency and opaqueness. We illustrate how transparency and opaqueness are produced interchangeably, as actors are oriented towards the past, present, or future. The study extends our understanding of information visibility inside organizations, by bringing to the foreground its sociomaterial and temporal nature.
Recommended Citation
Pachidi, Stella; Huysman, Marleen; and Berends, J.J (Hans), "Playing the Numbers Game: Dealing with Transparency" (2016). ICIS 2016 Proceedings. 7.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2016/ISOrganizations/Presentations/7
Playing the Numbers Game: Dealing with Transparency
This paper unpacks the performativity of transparency inside the organization. Organizational members often use digital technologies to make their actions visible to others in the organization. However, practices of visibility produce opaqueness as much as transparency. In our qualitative study in a telecommunications organization, organizational members sometimes made their actions transparent to their colleagues and managers, while at other times they played numbers games and made their actions opaque. We take a sociomaterial perspective and investigate how practices of visibility are performed by organizational members while using digital technologies. We consider the temporality of visibility making practices, to better understand how they emerge and how they produce transparency and opaqueness. We illustrate how transparency and opaqueness are produced interchangeably, as actors are oriented towards the past, present, or future. The study extends our understanding of information visibility inside organizations, by bringing to the foreground its sociomaterial and temporal nature.