Politics of disclosure: Organizational transparency as multi-actor negotiation
Transparency is in vogue, yet oftentimes used as an umbrella concept for a wide array of phenomena. More focused concepts are needed to understand the form and function of different phenomena of visibility. In this article, we develop a definition of organizational transparency as systematic disclosure programs that meet the information needs of other actors. Organizational transparency, we argue, is best studied as an inter-organizational negotiation process on the field- level. To evaluate its merit, we apply this framework to a case study on the introduction of open data in the Berlin city administration. Analyzing the politics of disclosure, we learn about the similarities and differences between phenomena of visibility (e.g. open data, freedom of information), explore the transformative power of negotiating transparency, and deduce recommendations for managing transparency.