ORGSEC

"The ""Hidden Architecture"" of Organizations: A Study of Organizational Secrecy"

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'Secrecy, defined as intentional concealment of information by insiders from outsiders, is a fundamental part of organizations. It serves as the basis for the “hidden architecture” of organizations: how organizational groups, such as exclusive and powerful ones, are established, organized and regulated can be an outcome of the workings of secrecy. This “hidden architecture” significantly shapes organizational decisions and actions and has profound social, economic and political implications, as the recent revelations of WikiLeaks highlighted. Despite its significance, the topic of organizational secrecy has remained widely neglected in the field of organization theory. To rectify this, the proposed project provides a first systematic investigation of organizational secrecy. The aim is to bring organizational secrecy into research focus, add it as a basic construct to the field’s analytical repertoire, develop a new social process approach to secrecy, and outline its wide-ranging implications. The project takes an innovative multidisciplinary approach, including organization theory, sociology and philosophy, and an in-depth qualitative case study approach. The fellowship at Copenhagen Business School – one of the most innovative research environments with a large expertise of organization theory – constitutes a unique setting for carrying out this project. Through the training, the international mobility accompanied by the exposure to highly valuable international scientist and industry networks, the fellow will strengthen and broaden her research profile, knowledge base and skills – this will act as tremendous catalyst for her career development towards a position of professional maturity. European research excellence and competitiveness will be promoted through establishing lasting synergetic collaborations between international researchers that will produce research outputs of excellence on the timely topic of organizational secrecy.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

Secrets within organisations can have widespread social, economic and political repercussions. An EU initiative is conducting a groundbreaking study on the timely yet widely overlooked field of organisational secrecy.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

Secrecy has been a hot topic in recent years following the very public debates about transparency and accountability resulting from WikiLeaks and other high-profile whistleblowing incidents. Despite the pervasiveness of secrecy, no systematic research has been carried out on the formal and informal social processes that deliberately conceal information from and by actors in organisations.

With EU funding, the project 'The "hidden architecture" of organizations: A study of organizational secrecy' (ORGSEC) aims to grow the body of knowledge on organisational secrecy by taking an interdisciplinary and methodological approach to research. The overall goal is to make the study topic relevant to the research community and inform on its far-reaching implications for groups, networks and organisations.

Work began by examining the concept of secrecy in social science literature, particularly organisation theory, sociology and philosophy. This study showed that secrecy is multidimensional and has a lasting influence on daily life.

A comprehensive analysis revealed that secrecy is a fundamental trait and process in organisations. Secrecy is firmly rooted in the very structures and ethos of organisations; it is not simply a by-product of what people choose to conceal or not.

Another study explored the culture found in some organisations that develops when several departments or groups do not want to share information or knowledge with other employees in the same company. Results showed that such groups, cliques or networks may actually encourage creativity and innovation.

Overall, research points to secrecy as a notion that should not necessarily be seen in a negative light, unlike transparency and public accountability.

ORGSEC put forward valid reasons for organisations and even governments to be secretive. Given today's emphasis on openness in all facets of public and private life, outcomes will have lasting implications for research, organisations, policymaking and society overall.