Opening Keynote: Christina Garsten

The Corporate Gaze: Transparency and Other Organizational Visions

In an expanding global economy, the notion of ‘transparency’ has gained increasing currency as an organizational goal. In a wide variety of situations, increased transparency is held up as a preferred point of direction for organizations, public as well as private. The notion of transparency implies visibility, possibilities for seeing through, for seeing, and being been. It carries hopes for more just procedures and open decision making processes. It suggests higher degrees of clarity, rationality and accountability. Transparency, then, is an entry-point to the understanding of contemporary society and culture and the visions and challenges that are attached to it.

The placing of transparency on the corporate agenda is evinced in the creation of corporate codes of conduct and standards for corporate social accountability. Through workshops, training sessions and consultancy services, corporate actors are learning how to ‘open their books’ to public scrutiny and judgement. We see it in ways of measuring and ranking performance and procedural outcomes. It is evinced as well in the use information technology and architectural design, ranging from online calendars to glassed buildings. Yet, processes of making visible certain kinds of information also involve complex negotiations regarding what shall be displayed and what shall remain hidden. It is not always in the best interest of a corporation to reveal valuable information. For example, companies often have to be reticent about providing information that may rob them of their competitive edge, and may have strong interests in being secretive about certain aspects of their activities.

The presentation addresses the significance of ‘transparency’ for the understanding of contemporary organizational life. What broader social trends and fashions inform the call for transparency in organizations? How is transparency manifested in organizational practices? What are some of the advanteges and challenges in pursuing transparency? Such questions, and other issues, will be addressed in this presentation.

Biography

Christina Garsten is Professor and Chair at the Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University, and Research Director at Score (Stockholm University and Stockholm School of Economics). Her research interests are in the anthropology of organizations and markets, processes of globalization and emerging forms of regulation and accountability in the labour market and in transnational trade.

She has published a number of articles on high-tech organizational culture, flexibilization of employment, and corporate social responsibility. Recent books are Ethical Dilemmas in Management (co-edited with Tor Hernes, Routledge, 2008), Workplace Vagabonds: Career and Community in Changing Worlds of Work (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), Transparency in a New Global Order: Unveiling Organizational Visions (co-edited with Monica Lindh de Montoya, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008). She also published Market Matters: Exploring Cultural Processes in the Global Marketplace (co-edited with Monica Lindh de Montoya, Palgrave Macmillan 2004), Learning to be Employable (co-edited with Kerstin Jacobsson, Palgrave 2004), and New Technologies at Work (co-edited with Helena Wulff, Berg, 2003).

Christina Garsten is a board member of the largest research funding agency in Sweden, The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation, and Chair of the Gunnar Myrdahl Committee at Stockholm University. She is board member of Society for Economic Anthropology, USA. She is member of the editorial committee of the journals Organization, Scandinavian Journal of Management, and American Anthropologist.

She has been visiting scholar at London School of Economics, Ecole des Hautes Etudies en Sciences Sociale, Stanford University, Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, European University Institute, Cambridge University, and Leeds University.

Christina Garsten has also worked as a lecturer and consultant for large-scale organizations over a period of fifteen years, involving organizational culture in practice, leadership programmes, and the use of ethnographic approaches in marketing research.

Links

• Faculty webpage