Making Transparency Transparent: The Evolution of Observation in Management Theory Ethan S. Bernstein Harvard Business School Morgan Hall 345 Boston, MA 02163 617-682-7200
[email protected] Observation is key to management scholarship and practice. Yet a holistic view of its role in management has been elusive, in part due to shifting terminology. The current popularity of the term “transparency” provides the occasion for a thorough review, which finds (a) a shift in the object of observation from organizational outcomes to the detailed individual activities within them; (b) a shift from people observing the technology to technology observing people; and (c) a split in the field, with managers viewing observation almost entirely from the observer’s perspective, leaving the perspective of the observed to the realm of scholarly methodology courses and philosophical debates on privacy. I suggest how the literature on transparency and related literatures might be improved with research designed in light of these trends. KEYWORDS: transparency, privacy, performance, organizations, management theory ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: I thank Julie Battilana, Ethan Burris, Tim Earle, Amy Edmondson, John Elder, Elizabeth Hansen, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Joshua Margolis, Tsedal Neeley, Nitin Nohria, Shefali Patil, Kathy Qu, Ryan Raffaelli, Lakshmi Ramarajan, and Bradley Staats for feedback on prior versions of this work; Jim Detert, Sim Sitkin, and two anonymous reviewers for insightful and developmental feedback; and the Harvard Business School for financial support. Please cite as: Bernstein, E. S. Making transparency transparent: The evolution of observation in management theory. Academy of Management Annals, 11(1): 217-266. 1 We are increasingly observed and observing at work.