Organizational transparency as myth and metaphor

Abstract

Transparency has achieved a mythical status in society. Myths are not false accounts or understandings, but deep-seated and definitive descriptions of the world that ontologically ground the ways in which we frame and see the world around us. We explore the mythical nature of transparency from this perspective, explain its social-historical underpinnings and discuss its influence on contemporary organizations. In doing so, we also theorize in a more general sense about the relationship between myth, as a foundational understanding and description of the world, and the constellation of metaphors, as specific ways of framing and seeing organizational reality, to which it gives rise. While observations and evidence can always be adduced to challenge a particular set of metaphors, the endogenous force of the myth may sustain the overall project. This process is explained with a detailed analysis of the transparency myth.

Keywords

metaphor modernity myth transparency

Contemporary organizations are in the business of transparency. Either due to legal, social and public pressure or by the design of their own making, organizations of today are subject to the ideal of and the desire for increased transparency. This is not to suggest that organizations are open or candid about everything they do; rather, that transparency is a growing concern for organizations and institutions of all sorts (e.g. Bovens, 1998; Tapscott and Ticoll, 2003; Florini, 2007; Bennis et al., 2008). Driven by a potent combination of financial crises, corporate scandals, new communication technologies and inquisitive stakeholders, transparency has become one of the most cherished and celebrated, yet unquestioned, principles of the current business environment (Lord, 2006). Although the notion is used forcefully and frequently, transparency is rarely defined – neither in the news nor in the boardroom – beyond common-sense understandings as ‘openness’, ‘insight’ or ‘clarity’ (Oliver, 2004; Hood, 2006; Henriques, 2007). Consequently, many social actors and institutions talk about the value and significance of transparency without specifying what it means and entails more precisely. Nonetheless, despite the lack of precise use of the concept, transparency is seen both as a means of bringing respectability back into business and of performing in ways so as not to be questioned (Pagano and Pagano, 2004).

As such, transparency has obtained a status in contemporary society much like religious principles (Hood, 2006) or, as we shall argue, myths. Myths are not simply false understandings or accounts, as assumed by common-sense uses of the term, but foundational descriptions of the world in a narrative form aimed at producing meaning and direction for a community and its members (Midgley, 2004). As constellations of widely held and institutionalized beliefs, myths often remain relatively stable, even over many years and across generations. This, we argue, is also the case for transparency, which has become a taken-for-granted ideal and explanation of how society and its organizations must function. Myths, in turn, are embodied by metaphors, symbolic and imaginative ways of speaking and thinking that sustain the myths and allow them to be deployed in support of a broad range of political and ideological positions. The expression ‘seeing is knowing’, for example, is one foundational metaphor at the heart of the transparency myth – a metaphor suggesting that having all there is in view directly and transparently fuels our knowledge and understanding of something (as if visual perception equates to tried and tested forms of knowledge).

In this article, we aim to do a number of things. First, we set out to provide a detailed examination of transparency as a societal goal, including an analysis of how this goal influences organizational practices and, in turn, the ability of the public to see and evaluate those practices. We argue that organizational transparency can best be understood as a myth that has a pervasive and largely unquestioned influence on contemporary organizations. A second, related, aim is to provide a theoretical explanation of why organizational transparency, as a myth, persists, despite evidence and legitimate observations questioning its value and utility. We argue that the transparency myth provides a deep-seated substratum for a range of metaphors, which provide naturalized ways of talking and thinking about organizations. The myth directly fuels contemporary ways of talking and thinking about organizational transparency, yet ironically is itself sheltered from critique and remains intact. We explain the relationship between myth and metaphor and illustrate this dynamic in the context of the organizational transparency myth.

The article is structured as follows. We first provide an introduction to the contemporary focus on transparency, emphasizing its social-historical origins, its potentials and promises as well as its limitations. We then turn to discussing transparency as a myth, highlighting in particular prevailing transparency assumptions in the context of organization. Finally, we elaborate more theoretically the linkages between myth and metaphors that lie at the heart of the persistence of organizational transparency – similar to other myths – even despite evidence questioning its practical value and the insights that it provides.

Transparency and its social-historical heritage

Transparency is foundational to modernity and its assumption of increased certainty and insight into social as well as natural matters (Vattimo, 1992). Although the devotion to transparency has ancient roots (Hood, 2006), it has attained a predominant position in modern society where transparency is celebrated as an essential dimension of rationality, progress and good governance (e.g. Florini, 2007; Garsten and de Montoya, 2008; Piotrowski, 2010). Modernity is wrought by the conviction that transparency – for example, as candour and frankness in the organization of social affairs, and the application of rational and scientific principles in the investigation and analysis of the social world – is essential to secure a legible, efficient and just society. Anticipated by the Enlightenment and its critical questioning of traditional institutions, customs and morals, modernity introduced a progressive, unilinear and emancipatory view of history based on a strong belief in reason, rationality and modern science (Nisbet, 1966).

Reality, according to modern thought, is usually out of sight, concealed, so to speak, ‘behind’ the scene. Through the use of reason and rationality, the promise of modern thought is to move the spectator behind the ‘curtain’, to uncover the truth behind its fancy façades and seductive appearances and eventually emancipate the individual from the superstitions and repressions of authoritative regimes (Nisbet, 1966). Hegel’s distinction between Schein and Wesen – a distinction reproduced in the works of Marx – represents the modern ideal of revealing and exposing the truth concealed by the glittering images of the world. Likewise, Weber’s description of modern society as a ‘disenchanted’ (inspired by Schiller’s notion of the ‘de-divinization’ of the world) described modernity as a secularized society in which scientific knowledge is valued higher than faith and where processes of ‘rationalization’ replace ancient beliefs with naturalist scientific explanations. Modernity, thus, represents the goal of absolute (self-)transparency – a goal reflected in positive science and notions of open and unrestricted information (see e.g. Vattimo, 1992).

While the promise of transparency is essentially a promise of openness, exposure and insight and, by implication, access to the truth behind its many fronts and disguises (Oliver, 2004; Roberts, 2009), the commitment to organizational transparency rests, as Strathern (2000: 313) puts it ‘in the proposition that if procedures and methods are open to scrutiny, then the organization is open to critique and ultimately to improvement’ (see also Tapscott and Ticoll, 2003).

Sources of doubt

Although the notion of transparency is emblematic of modernity, it is, ironically, modernity itself that has fostered some of its most fundamental challenges. Since Kant ([1781] 2007) discussed the limits of human knowledge and the impossibility of knowing an object independent of the knowing mind, philosophers of science have often reminded us that any act of sense-making inevitably shapes its object of inquiry (e.g. Morin, 1986). Epistemological breakthroughs in physics at the beginning of the twentieth century – most notably the works of Einstein, Heisenberg and Bohr – confirmed the notion that knowledge is uncertain and relative to the observer (Prigogine and Stengers, 1984). Implications of these insights are traceable in the works of contemporary philosophers, sociologists and epistemologists who seek in different ways to redefine the relationship between science and its object by underscoring the creative role of the observer in the production of knowledge (e.g. Maturana and Varela, 1980; Morin, 1984; von Foerster, 1984).

Parallel to these advances in the philosophy of science, socio-political developments in the twentieth century, including the advent of totalitarian regimes, the unfolding of two world wars, the surfacing of concentration camps, etc. have shattered the modern project and its faith in increased knowledge, reason and progress (Lyotard, 1992). With human knowledge and progress in doubt, the journey towards the demise of the idea of a central and supreme viewpoint had begun – a journey later referred to as ‘the dissolution of grand narratives’ (Lyotard, 1984). Rather than a unitary vision of the world and a universally shared language through which reality can present itself, modernity has laid bare the co-existence of many competing language games as well as a multiplicity of ‘local’ rationalities (e.g. ethnic, sexual, religious, cultural, aesthetic minorities) that together challenge the possibility of unambiguous clarity and joint experiences across different life-worlds and social practices (Lyotard, 1984).

At the same time, however, the nature and ubiquity of digital media promise to make the transparency goal at least technically possible. By offering information in ‘real time’ about practically everything that happens on the globe, the media, according to Vattimo (1992: 6), could be seen as ‘a concrete realization of Hegel’s Absolute Spirit: the perfect self-consciousness of the whole of humanity, the coincidence between what happens, history and human knowledge’. This potential, however, has not materialized. In contrast to the gloomy prophecies of philosophers like Adorno and Horkheimer (and novelists like George Orwell) – envisaging a supreme or comprehensive viewpoint capable of unifying all others – the media have facilitated what Vattimo (1992: 5) calls ‘a general explosion and proliferation of Weltanschauungen, of world views’. These arguments are radicalized in the writings of Baudrillard. According to Baudrillard (1988), modernity has been obsessed with meaning, with an over-determination of causes, effects and answers, to the effect of producing an amount of information that eliminates conventional notions of transparency. Things disappear, according to Baudrillard, through proliferation or contamination, by becoming transparent in the sense of being saturated with information. His critique, thus, denies the link between information and insight, and defies the modernist notion of uncovering a single or univocal reality behind the spectacles, stages, images and other appearances of the world.

Despite these conditions, insights and developments, transparency has retained or even reinforced its status as a defining principle of contemporary society (e.g. Roberts, 2009). In public discourse about corporate and political decisions and actions, transparency has become a highly value-laden notion, more often preached than practised and typically invoked without questioning its basic assumptions. With such ‘quasi-religious significance’ (Hood, 2006: 3), transparency may be described as a ‘god term’ (Burke, [1950] 1969) or, as we shall argue below, a myth.

The transparency myth

In conventional thinking, a myth is something imagined or fictitious – a story, a fable, a legend, or perhaps even a lie. We are so used to thinking of myth as the opposite of truth or science that we rarely acknowledge the significant role myth plays in contemporary society, even within science (Cassirer, 1944; Midgley, 2004). Myths, according to Midgley, are ‘imaginative patterns, networks of powerful symbols that suggest particular ways of interpreting the world. They shape its meaning’ (2004: 1). Such a perspective on myth does not pass judgement on its truth or falsity. In the community in which the myth is told, it is usually regarded as a true and self-evident account of reality. To the stranger, however, the account comes across as pure imagination. Sense-making, however, is foundational to humankind and since we are ‘condemned to meaning’, as Merleau-Ponty (1962: xix) puts it, it is not possible to envisage a society without myths or mythical thinking (Cassirer, 1953; Laplantine, 1974; Vattimo, 1992).

Human thought requires a comprehensive and self-evident image of the world – something which myth provides by naturalizing social constructions and conventions, that is, by presenting them as if their origin were not society, but nature (Barthes, 1972; Jacob, 1981). In its passage from social construction to nature, myth corroborates the values and ideals that are essential to society, but tends, simultaneously, to reduce the complexity of human life, reject contradictions and short-circuit processes of interpretation (Laplantine, 1974). Like science, myth demarcates reality and defines what is possible. Yet, in contrast to science, myth offers a complete and definitive explanation of how the world gained its current form and how it is supposed to function (Cassirer, 1944). Instead of exploring and testing its understanding of reality, myth reveals reality by introducing a particular source of light – and thus also darkness (Cassirer, 1953). Myth, in other words, provides meaning and coherence through a type of a priori argument that leaves out doubt and claims to cover all possible situations. As such, myth speaks to the questions of everyday life as they present themselves in the shape of, for example, uncertainty, doubt, anxiety or issues of moral nature (Jacob, 1981; see also Berger and Luckmann, 1966; Berger, 1967).

The notion of myth and its particular qualities contributes to our understanding of transparency as a quest with complex and conflicting potential. Whenever myth is at play, concepts and ideas are not seen as representations and, thus, taken for what they stand for or mean indirectly, but for their instant appearance. Under the influence of the transparency myth, data access, for example, is not seen as an indication of transparency, but as transparency in and of itself. Although myth is essentially metaphorical, it tends to deny its representative character, to present itself not as a part of the whole, but as totality itself. In this shape, myth resembles dogma – an official and established belief or doctrine not to be disputed or doubted (Cassirer, 1953). As such, the social status of transparency extends beyond an ideal or an ideology. While an ideal may be recognized as such, a myth is blind to itself. Also, while transparency has ideological underpinnings and is often used for ideological purposes, for example, as an argument against government regulation (Etzioni, 2010), transparency is more than a vision or doctrine imposed, more or less consciously, by some on others (e.g. Garo, 2009). As a myth, transparency is a communication system that remains largely hidden or opaque to its participants (Barthes, 1972) and is therefore sustained regardless of doubt or conflicting evidence. Although science, philosophy and social behaviour, as we have seen, frequently defy the notion of unqualified transparency, including the possibility of self-transparency, its value is nonetheless continuously reproduced again and again in political, corporate and popular discourse. Through a number of auxiliary metaphors, transparency is repeatedly activated, across organizations and situations, as an indisputable description of how society and its institutions ought to develop and function. Transparency, however, is more than simply one myth among several others. As an authoritative belief in the possibility of ever-increasing insight and clarity – and thus as a precondition for a rational, efficient and just society – transparency is arguably one of the foundational myths of modernity (Vattimo, 1992; see also Brighenti, 2007).

Metaphor and myth

The systematic analysis of myth in linguistic and historical terms is most closely associated with anthropology, including the prominent work of Lévi-Strauss (1963). Lévi-Strauss (1955) argued that the study of myths in essence involves the study of deeply ingrained universal systems of meaning where ahistorical and synchronic ‘mythemes’ structure ways of speaking and thinking in particular societies (that are diachronic and situated) at particular points in time. While different mythical stories and figurative ways of speaking may be manifest at a particular point in time, they hail from the same underlying mythical structure. Some of Lévi-Strauss’s core ideas were taken up by influential thinkers like Barthes (1972) and Douglas (1986) who, adapting them to more literary styles of analysis, focused on how myths underpin social organization and the main intellectual currents.

Within literary theory, this understanding of myth is taken further by Kermode (1966) and Frye (1990) among others, who both link myths to metaphors, as the direct embodiment of those myths in ways of speaking and thinking in the present. Frye (1990) argues that myth and metaphor are interrelated in time and space. Where a metaphor establishes a condition of equivalence in the here-and-now that allows us to consider an abstract concept or a practice as if it were a different thing existing elsewhere, myth suggests a condition of equivalence which held in the past and will continue to hold in the future. This also suggests that when metaphors take on mythical proportions, and when they come to embody myths in a direct manner (so that the ‘as if’ hypothetical and figurative nature of a metaphor becomes a literal ‘as’ representation of the way things are), these metaphors themselves take on a condition of equivalence. Kermode (1966) highlights a similar notion of equivalence for myths across time and space, where metaphors, as conscious fictions, may over time evolve into fully institutionalized and deeply ingrained – even dogmatic – ways of thinking about the social world around us. Kermode (1966: 41) makes the point that ‘if we forget that fictions are fictive, we regress to myth’.

The close interrelation between metaphor and myth has also been central to work in philosophy, most notably the work of Gadamer (1976), Cassirer (1953), and Vaihinger ([1924] 1968). Cassirer (1953), for example, makes metaphor the foundation of myths, and casts myth essentially as a ‘dead’ metaphor, an ancient relic, which, however, still guides our active sense-making in context. The trajectory that Cassirer (1953) appears to have in mind is one where an initial metaphor, such as the personification of organizations, conventionalizes over time, and turns into a dead metaphor or foundational myth (see also Kermode, 1966). The often forgotten work of Vaihinger ([1924] 1968) presents a useful formulation of this dynamic; the back and forth movement between metaphors and myths, or dogmas, as he calls them. In his work on the ‘philosophy of as if’ he formulates a ‘law of the devolution of ideas’. The law, or rather the formulation, states that an idea such as transparency has a history of its ‘givenness’ to us. Such history is an evolutionary trajectory based on how individuals and groups in society relate to the idea and whether they see it as a conscious fiction or treat it as a dogmatic given. The stance of individuals and groups oscillates between stages. In the stage of fictions, individuals use metaphors as conscious falsehoods and recognize that the as-if nature of the metaphor is useful to them to pragmatically get by and give meaning to their circumstances. Such fictions may regress into myths, however, with the individual turning the metaphor into a literal description (the ‘as if’ turns into ‘as’) and sees the world and the idea as one. The movement may, however, also go the other way when myths are called into question, and new metaphors, as alternative ways of thinking, are thrown up to de-institutionalize the previous mythical structure. While Vaihinger sketched the broad contours of the ‘oscillation’ between metaphor and myth, he did not specifically formalize the stages of the process. With our analysis of the transparency myth we aim to provide such theoretical detail from the context of organizations, and by doing so we hope to open up a new front for the analysis of pervasive and enduring myths such as transparency.

Myth in the organizational context

In the organizational context, according to Meyer and Rowan (1977), myths manifest themselves at two different levels. On the one hand, myths are widely shared cultural ideals of how organizations ought to function. At this general level, myths shape the formal aspects of an organization, such as positions, policies, programmes and procedures, and offer direction and legitimacy to its existence, even though the implied ideals regularly differ from the daily activities of organizational life. Simultaneously, and on the other hand, myths function more locally to preserve the impression that the ideals are actually implemented in practice. Since the positions, policies, programmes and procedures are considered proper, rational, effective and even necessary, organizations tend to support and incorporate them into their structures to avoid critique and to bolster their legitimacy. At the same time, however, these myths, which drive organizations toward structural isomorphism, are rarely consistent with notions of efficiency and therefore often decoupled from (or loosely coupled with) work practices (see also Orton and Weick, 1990).

Based on Meyer and Rowan’s notions of myth and ceremonial conformity, it may be argued that the transparency myth reveals itself in organizations as: (1) a celebration of and general commitment to principles of openness and accessibility, principles which are endorsed even when organizations are far less open and accessible than they claim to be; and (2) as various disclosure practices through which organizations make information available to their surroundings. In its second and more local form, the myth becomes the official ceremonial documentation that the organization is able and willing to comply with transparency as a cultural value.

Both levels of myth are essential in understanding the organizational and social impact of the transparency goal. None of these levels, however, would make sense or function in practice without the existence of and support from the modernist assumptions discussed above. Without a general conviction that transparency casts light on otherwise obscure or invisible dimensions of social life and thus drives disenchantment, reveals truth and facilitates an efficient, moral and just society, concrete organizational manifestations of the transparency myth would stand out as myths in the common-sense understanding of the term, that is, as pure fiction. In the following, we shall unpack the organizational manifestations of the transparency myth in more detail, emphasizing and critiquing their blind spots.

Transparency as openness and information

In the context of organizations and governments, the transparency myth is usually received as a demand for increased openness and accessibility. As Oliver (2004: 3) writes: ‘[T]ransparency, as currently defined, is letting the truth be available for others to see if they so choose or perhaps think to look, or have the time, means, and skills to look’ (italics in original). Based on the assumption that openness facilitates insight and clarity, organizations increasingly adopt their structures to signal an invitational practice of openness and candour. While organic farmers, for example, invite customers and critics inside their premises with slogans such as ‘ come and see for yourself’, conventional farmers, agricultural associations, and mink producers have adopted similar practices by hosting open farm days to show that they have nothing to hide or that they operate in accordance with the highest ethical or sustainable principles. Dialogical forums between organizations and their critical stakeholders, organized for example, by corporations in the chemical or pharmaceutical industries, essentially serve the same purpose of signalling organizational adherence to the value of openness and a willingness to submit their facilities to scrutiny (e.g. Cheney and Christensen, 2001).

Most organizations, however, do less that this and signal instead their commitment to openness through on-going information disclosures. The transparency myth and the associated organizational ideal of openness manifest themselves most notably as an almost unlimited faith in information. Today, this faith has become institutionalized through the goals and publications of anti-corruption organizations like Transparency International (Hood, 2006). Simultaneously, new types of transparency in the shape of information disclosures are appearing in many different institutional contexts, including more recently the contested information leakages of Wikileaks, Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden. In the shape of information, the transparency goal speaks directly to the modernist mindset according to which information is knowledge and, as such, a necessary and powerful cure against power abuse, corruption, fraud, deception and other types of corporate or institutional evil (see Vattimo, 1992).

Consequently, extant writings treat transparency as information provision and usually describe transparency as an adaptive and rather passive process of making information available to the general public (see Fenster, this volume). Rawlins (2009: 75), for example, defines transparency as:

the deliberate attempt to make available all legally releasable information – whether positive or negative in nature – in a manner that is accurate, timely, balanced and unequivocal, for the purpose of enhancing the reasoning ability of publics and holding organizations accountable for their actions, policies, and practices.

Implied in the notion of transparency as information provision (see also Millar et al., 2005; Williams, 2005), is a belief in the possibility and desirability of (re)presenting the reality of the organization and its activities in an all-inclusive, balanced and unequivocal manner. Rawlins (2009: 79), thus, urges organizations to voluntarily ‘share information that is inclusive, auditable (verifiable), complete, relevant, accurate, neutral, comparable, clear, timely, accessible, reliable, honest, and holds the organization accountable’ (see also Bandsuch et al., 2008). In the organizational context, the transparency myth, in other words, is naturalized as purified information, devoid of bias, selection, framing, ambiguity, inconsistency, and other signs of organizational interference (cf. Fenster, 2006). The conviction, which is rarely questioned explicitly, seems to be that if you have information, you have access; if you have access, you can see; if you see, you understand; and if you understand, you are free (e.g. Williams, 2005; Jahansoozi, 2006; Rawlins, 2009).

In practice, however, the exact links between transparency, openness and information are often vague and unclear. Although organizational openness may be a precondition for transparency, it is insufficient in itself to ensure the type of clarity and insight associated with transparency. Likewise, while information availability may be considered a sign of organizational openness, it may – at a deeper level – be the cause of new forms of opacity, not least because of burgeoning overload (Tsoukas, 1997; Lamming et al., 2004; Drucker and Gumpert, 2007). Even if organizations were able to supply all the types of information prescribed by Rawlins (2009) and others, such prescriptive understanding reduces transparency to a feature of the sender organization without considering the abilities of receivers to actually handle the information thus made available (Fenster, 2006). Common-sense notions of transparency, which shape political and organizational understandings of the term, ignore incompatible evidence about the active role of the receiver in making sense of available information (Fenster, 2006, see also Fenster, this volume). Moreover, and of particular relevance for the argument we are making in this article, common-sense notions of transparency imply what Oliver (2004: 3) calls ‘a passive posture or motivation’ on the part of the disclosing organization, thus disregarding important insight into organizational information management.

No representation by an organization is neutral; there is always a perspective implied if not explicitly offered, for example, in the selection of what counts as ‘good information’ (Christensen et al., 2011). In contrast to the institutional myth of openness, officially celebrated in most contemporary organizations, research shows that openness rarely is a practice when organizations manage their information vis-à-vis its different audiences. Organizations carefully select, simplify and summarize data before they are revealed, they selectively disclose or leak information, for example, through ‘competitive signalling’ (e.g. Heil and Robertsen, 1991) and they shrewdly manage the timing of disclosure, sometimes with the intention of deflecting critique or handling potential issues (see also O’Neill, 2006). Moreover, with its rules and practices of gatekeeping and filtering, modern bureaucracy has an inbuilt tendency to alter the flow of information between an organization and its different audiences (e.g. Drucker and Gumpert, 2007).

Even in organizations where bureaucracy is limited or nascent, information seldom flows freely. For reasons of uncertainty, impression management or desire for control, people in organizations often conceal or withhold information (Eisenberg, 2007). In addition, the language used to convey openness may often be vague and unclear and thus inaccessible to most audiences (Henriques, 2007; Etzioni, 2010). Acknowledging that organizations and organizational members have many good reasons for concealment, Eisenberg (1984) describes strategic ambiguity as a necessity in complex environments with many conflicting communication goals. Allowing organizations to address several different audiences with the same message, the strategic use of ambiguity simultaneously helps organizations avoid revealing confidential details while giving off the impression of openness and dialogue with internal and external stakeholders (Leitch and Davenport, 2002).

These tendencies, which are not new developments, but quintessential dimensions of modern organization and bureaucracy (Piotrowski, 2010), illustrate the limitations of putting information on the same footing as transparency. Yet, since information accessibility is seen as a precondition for openness and transparency – a belief reflected in the United Nations’ consecration in 1946 of freedom of information as a fundamental human right – the number of positions, policies, programmes and procedures of information disclosures is bound to increase and this way to underscore the modern myth of transparency. In spite of increasing doubt and conflicting evidence, the conviction that information, openness and transparency are intimately related has naturalized the demand for more information and revived the belief in information as a source of disenchantment and as the epitome of an efficient, moral and just society (Etzioni, 2010). In this process, the transparency pursuit risks being reduced to a set of information-gathering rituals, disconnected and autonomized from their original ideal.

Transparency as proactive disclosure

In the organizational landscape of today, shaped by inquisitive media and critical audiences as well as the ubiquity of new information technologies, the passive notions of organizational openness and information provision are gradually giving way to new types of proactive disclosure practices, thus further developing and shaping the institutional myths of transparency. As we have argued, organizations are not simply information providers and their transparency practices cannot be comprehended as passive responses to public demands for insight and information.

Over the last decade, especially, transparency has developed from a question of how organizations can adapt to external requests for information to a conscious strategy through which they pursue respectability and social accreditation (e.g. Oliver, 2004; Drucker and Gumpert, 2007). Thus, business consultants urge organizations in dealing with the call for transparency to be proactive in carefully choosing the fields and the activities where they will demonstrate this value to their stakeholders (e.g. Holtz and Havens, 2009). Simultaneously, the notion of commitment beyond compliance has captured the stage of social responsibility, where corporations increasingly are expected to move from mere acquiescence to engagement (Jamali and Mirshak, 2007). Both trends stimulate proactive organizational initiatives in the transparency arena.

A proactive and more professionalized version of the organizational transparency myth holds elements of pre-emptive standard setting, strategic disclosure, auditing and consistency policy. Thus, we observe how transparency is increasingly staged by organizational and inter-organizational initiatives and negotiations. Take, for example, attempts to standardize corporate attitudes to disclosures about mass layoffs or toxic releases (see Fung et al., 2007). By negotiating, setting and complying with standards for corporate openness with respect to such issues, organizations not only create a joint understanding of what transparency means in practice in these arenas, but also (re)produce transparency as an institutional myth.

When organizations and institutions become proactive players in the game of setting the standards of transparency, however, lack of public insight and understanding takes on new dimensions. This is true not only because revealing and concealing are narrow images of each other (Garsten and de Montoya, 2008; Christensen et al., 2011), but also because proactivity allows powerful organizations to affect transparency regimes and practices to their own advantage, thus shaping what is visible and what is not (Henriques, 2007; Zyglidopoulos and Fleming, 2011). While powerful organizations, for example, use their political clout to limit the scope of transparency systems (e.g. nutritional labelling in the US) (Fung et al. 2007), agreements between organizations as to what types of information to disclose allow proactive organizations to co-opt the notions of openness and transparency and establish buffers between external disclosure demands and their own practices. Corporations that proactively set higher standards for themselves than those imposed by law, in other words, are able to capture the stage of openness while at the same time promoting transparency as an important social value (Christensen, 2002).

In this arena, transparency practices are increasingly professionalized and removed from the daily experiences of consumers and citizens. Etzioni’s (2010) distinction between social and public transparency calls attention to this transformation from the direct and often informal face-to-face type of social control, often characterizing local community, to contemporary formalized systems of public accountability that typically employ sophisticated accounting techniques and specialized languages accessible only to insiders and experts (Hood, 2006; O’Neill, 2006). In its more proactive shape, therefore, organizational transparency make citizens and customers highly dependent on intermediaries – community groups, environmental advocates, political advocates, associations of users, investigative reporters, financial pundits, and other experts – who are able to translate complex information into relatively simple metrics that allow lay persons to incorporate the information more easily into their individual lives (Fung et al., 2007). Fairclough’s notion of ‘discourse technologist’ (Fairclough, 1992: 8) captures well the role that such expert intermediaries play in sorting out and prioritizing the myriad of information about corporate practices, in constructing knowledge about transparency issues and, thus, in achieving hegemonic dominance within the discourse of accountability. The problems with dependency on such intermediaries are underscored by the doubtful advice provided by many financial advisors and analysts prior to the current financial crisis. Indeed, no evidence seems to suggest that consumers make better choices based on the rankings or advice provided by experts (Etzioni, 2010). Yet, given the increasing complexity of most accountability issues (financial, environmental, technological, etc.) and the growing amount of information available on these issues, our dependency on such ‘discourse technologists’ is bound to increase in the future. While more information is produced and made available to the general public than previously, the chances of non-experts deciphering and fully grasping the underlying reality behind such accounts are slimmer than ever before (Henriques, 2007).

Reporting is a good example of how transparency in its more proactive shape not only facilitates insight but also produces opacity. In recent years, corporate reports have not only become more voluminous and comprehensive, they also demand the involvement of an increasing number of different expert groups. Consequently, fewer audiences are able to check the validity of claims being made in the reports. In practice, there are several ways to deal with this issue. While some companies choose to publish a simplified version of the report and back that version up with additional information online, other companies are aiming towards stakeholder-specific reporting. As Henriques (2007) points out, both approaches have their merits, in terms of generating transparency, but also serious drawbacks. While the simplification plus additional information online version typically involves a deluge of information, sometimes described as ‘databombing’ or ‘snowing’ (Roberts, 2009), the stakeholder-specific reporting approach runs the risk of producing new types of opacity at the level of the organization as a whole.

Moreover, although organizational reports are increasingly subject to professional auditing, the auditing institution itself may be an additional source of opacity. The influence of the auditing profession lies in its presumed capacity to translate and simplify complex company accounts into clear and acceptable signs of corporate soundness and responsibility. As Strathern (2000) points out, the notion of audit epitomizes our understanding of transparency and its underlying notion of accountability. Yet, the products of auditing are rarely accessible to the lay person and hardly form a basis for public communication and insight. This problem is not limited to financial reporting. In almost all areas of reporting, interest groups lack the resources necessary to judge every detail of a company’s performance in relation to a specific issue (Henriques, 2007). In fact, it may be argued that most audiences lack the resources and expert knowledge needed to match corporate initiatives in the area of professional transparency management (Heald, 2006a; O’Neill, 2006). The combination of a previously unseen amount and complexity of information and the emergence of new discourse technologists in the area of organizational transparency seriously challenge our ideals about knowledge and insight. What looks like transparency on the surface may ultimately represent a deeper level of opacity. Interestingly, however, though these limitations are well known among politicians, media, corporations and citizens, the call for even more disclosures and more reporting persists. The myth of transparency, in other words, is tenacious in its ability to reject or ignore contradictions or conflicting evidence about the ability of information and information disclosures to generate insight and understanding (Roberts, 2009).

In situations of high complexity and doubt about how to verify organizational messages, a different notion of truth captures the stage. Instead of expecting transparency statements to provide direct access to organizational reality, critical audiences – including journalists, NGOs and the general public – focus on the coherence of organizational disclosures, expecting consistency between and among different organizational messages (Henriques, 2007). Understood as agreement or compatibility of a statement with other statements (including organizational action), the norm of consistency dramatically shapes organizational communication in areas such as corporate social responsibility, accountability and transparency (e.g. Bentele and Nothhaft, 2010; Pomering, 2011). As Christensen and Langer (2009) point out, contemporary organizations handle the growing pressure for transparency through policies of consistency. Driven by a potent combination of inquisitive publics asking for insight and information, and critical media and journalists zealously looking for gaps, contradictions and ambiguities in corporate messages, the aim of such policies is to ensure coherence and uniformity in everything organizations say and do. Across sectors, organizations and institutions are compulsively focused on producing messages consistent for both internal and external audiences. As we can clearly see when political leaders or business managers are interviewed for the media, part of this endeavour entails downplaying, avoiding or even denying discrepancies of any kind, for example, between front stage and back stage, between messages and behaviour, between ideals and practice, and between messages of the past and messages of the future. Moreover, in their pursuit of consistency, organizations increasingly impose tighter control of information flows and organizational voices (Drucker and Gumpert, 2007). Members of political parties, thus, are expected to articulate only the official opinion of the party, and corporations often limit voice to an official spokesperson. Ironically, such disciplining of organizational voices, even when pursued in response to external demands for transparency, may prevent unofficial, but relevant, information about corporate practices ‘percolating the “sides” of organizations’ (Heald, 2006b: 38) and thereby becoming accessible to the general public. In the name of openness, thus, organizations may produce new types of closure.

In its more proactive shape, the transparency myth is co-opted and re-engineered into a consistency paradigm and, subsequently, ‘sold’ back to society as transparency and credibility. Although it is obvious that such transparency practices have become autonomized from the original ideal of knowledge and insight, both the ideal and the daily activities of producing consistent transparency statements (CSR reports, auditing practices, etc.) continue to shape the formal aspects of contemporary organizations and offer direction and legitimacy to their existence.

Conclusion

Today, practices of openness, information provision, proactive disclosures, reporting, auditing, etc. have become naturalized as instances of organizational transparency. These activities, in other words, are not taken for what they stand for or mean indirectly, as representations (Christensen and Cheney, in press), but for their instant appearance, that is, as direct manifestations of organizational transparency. As a constellation of labels, ideas and practices, the transparency project should therefore be understood as a myth – a collective understanding of the world, which despite challenges, contrasting evidence, and perverse consequences, is sustained and remains taken for granted. Myths, once they have become taken for granted, provide a deep-seated ontological viewpoint for members of a community, so much so that the myth itself is hardly ever questioned (Midgley, 2004). As such, myths energize ways of meaning-making about particular practices, events or circumstances, and in ways that are broadly coherent with the myth itself.

Such ways of meaning making are, we argue, accomplished through metaphors. In the context of transparency, visual metaphors around an all-seeing and thus all-knowing vantage point are being emphasized, so that all there is to see and know about an organization is offered up to an individual. Obviously, as we have argued, such metaphors are fictions in the sense that they are hard to realize, or even look at in realistic terms (i.e., hardly any organization would be able to meet such demands), and to some extent they are also contradictory. Nonetheless, these metaphors still empower and sustain broadly accepted, mythical ways of thinking about contemporary organizations. The answer to this paradox lies in the mentioned oscillation between metaphor and myth. While a specific transparency metaphor such as ‘seeing is knowing’ is obviously a falsehood, it may be deemed useful to individuals in their sense-making about organizations and the political views and positions that they take up. When they recognize it actively as a falsehood, or fiction, they see that it is just a tentative ‘as if’ comparison. At this stage, individuals would recognize the provisional nature of the metaphor, considering it a potential interpretation, but one among many others. Yet, a metaphor may progress in the direction of a myth when it becomes conventionalized. Conventional metaphors still refer to literally different domains – such as seeing and knowing being different things – but also, and simultaneously, already impose a conventional reading on a situation, so that the world becomes conventionally and habitually categorized in the terms of the metaphor. At this point, individuals start to move away from consciously comparing visual perception to an act of knowing, and start to work from the inference that being able to see things in the round (as in ‘full disclosure’) equates to knowing and having a firm grasp of what things are like.

However, the evolution may continue until the conventional metaphor has become fully naturalized in the sense Barthes (1972) talked about it. Here the metaphoric category is considered as taken for granted and ‘given’, and loses its connection with the original source in the process. A fully naturalized or dead metaphor is no longer actively recognized or processed as a metaphor. The move from novel to conventional metaphor is accomplished via abstraction and conventionalization of metaphoric categories and requires repeated uses of the metaphor over time, so that it becomes naturalized and so that individuals ‘forget’ that it was originally a metaphor. While such ‘forgetting’ and subsequent reification of the metaphor may take significant time, the general consequence of this process is the foundation of a myth with pervasive and somewhat perverse influence on organizational practices and social judgements. The myth, or dead metaphor, gives rise to, fuels and energizes various more specific metaphors, or ways of seeing, as entailments, or implications, of the myth. Equating perception with conceptualization (i.e., seeing with knowing), for example, the transparency myth implies that information is value-free and perspective-free, something which shapes contemporary ideas and practices related to organizational openness, consistency, auditing and accountability. Most people, thus, tend to equate auditing with transparency: ‘An organization being audited is ipso facto being transparent about its dealings’ (Strathern, 2000: 313). While observations and evidence can be adduced to challenge a particular set of metaphors, the endogenous force of the myth may sustain the overall project. This, we argue, is a viable explanation of the persistence of the transparency project, as a myth, despite reasonable and legitimate challenges to its viability.

While the project of transparency originally relied on a mythology of revelation, on an ideal of demythologization, today the project is sustained in spite of evidence concerning its value and utility that exposes demythologization as a myth itself (Vattimo, 1992). In this situation, the transparency project has a tendency to become a play of surfaces, a ritualized game of transparency signs repeatedly referencing each other without much concern for the original emphasis on insight and knowledge (cf. Roberts, 2009). Whereas the ritual is traditionally seen as the expression of myth, as a presentation and confirmation of its taken-for-granted assumptions, this intimate relation is dissolved when the ritual closes in on itself and becomes its own signifier (Perniola, 1980). Whether the original ideal of transparency can be recaptured and reinvigorated under these circumstances remains to be seen.

With our analysis, we believe we have opened up a new perspective for the study of transparency, as a myth, compared to alternative approaches that focus on more specific practices or standards within the context of organizations. We have also sketched a theoretical account of how metaphors relate to myth, which provides an analytical model for further research of the development of broad meaning structures in societies, including work on the institutionalization of organizational ideas and ideals. Specifically, our approach contributes to an understanding of the ways individuals, groups and societies – through metaphors – speak and think about myths such as transparency. Attending to the interconnection between metaphor and myth offers further theory-building potential in that it allows us to explain how metaphors, and the myths that they embody, may take on a ritualistic dimension over time, where neither are being questioned and where both – in combination – limit the possibility for alternatives modes of thinking about societal and corporate issues such as transparency. While we have only described the mode in general terms, it can easily be extended into empirical research through discourse analytic methods that identify and analyze metaphors, as active figurative expressions or more ‘dead’ signifiers, within discourse associated with organizations.

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