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Achieving Transparency: The Visible, Invisible and Divisible in Academic Accountability Networks

Said Business School, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, daniel.neyland{at}sbs.ox.ac.uk

Demands for greater transparency form an increasingly prevalent feature of many areas of organizational activity. Through the rubric of transparency, demands are made for organizations to demonstrate recognition of their responsibility for environmental impact, how money is spent, the returns received on money invested and so on. This paper argues that transparency reviews, however, do not straightforwardly open up opportunities for observing the internal dynamics of an organization in order to render the organization accountable and its members aware of their responsibilities. Instead, transparency reviews encourage the adoption of new or re-formatted informational production processes that produce information intended to fit the auspices of the review. In this way, internal aspects of organizations are not `made available' but instead are re-oriented toward the production of specific forms of informational output that will externalize (or make available) a particular version of the internal dynamics of the organization. By studying these production processes in detail we find a series of ad-hoc, uncertain and disconnected processes through which accountability criteria are met and transparency achieved.

Key Words: accountability • audit • democracy • responsibility • transparency • universities

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Organization, Vol. 14, No. 4, 499-516 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/1350508407078050


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This Article Abstract Free Full Text (Free PDF) Free Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Neyland, D. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?