Secrecy in Practice: How Middle Managers Promote Strategic Initiatives behind the Scenes

Toegel, Ina; Levy, Orly; Jonsen, Karsten

doi:10.1177/0170840621998563

Cited by 24 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 76 publications

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“…In the absence of formal power, they temper their own aspirations, seek to take away fear, and accumulate internal influence (Wickert & de Bakker, 2018). If the conditions are unfavorable, they may adopt more secretive forms of promoting strategic issues (Toegel, Levy, & Jonsen, 2021). If actors are in a marginalized, less powerful position, they may have to use more deferential strategies of privileging the position of the recipients (DiBenigno, 2020;Nigam et al, 2016).…”

Section: Selling Issues Through Perspective Takingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Relational Dynamics of Issue-Selling: Enacting Different Genres for Dealing with Discontent

Lauche

Erez

2023

AMJ

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Actors without formal power can initiate and shape organizational change through issue selling as a means to address their concerns about organizational practices. The literature has emphasized the need for perspective taking and found discontent to be associated with inhibiting fear. Based on a longitudinal field study of middle managers trying to instigate strategic renewal in six different manufacturing companies, we find that discontent can also energize issue selling, particularly if sellers and recipients also engage in perspective taking. We identified three different genres of issue selling and enacting discontent that are jointly shaped by sellers and recipients: 1) productive confrontation, 2) avoiding escalation, and 3) collective moaning. In a process model of issue selling as framing, mobilizing and pursuing, we illustrate how the genres form part of an organization's collective repertoire of initiating and responding to change. Our findings have implications for pursuing change as well as for managers seeking to create a constructive environment for expressing discontent.

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Section: Selling Issues Through Perspective Takingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Relational Dynamics of Issue-Selling: Enacting Different Genres for Dealing with Discontent

Lauche

Erez

2023

AMJ

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“…In addition, we encourage further research on organizational sensemaking that systematically explores the power of the negative through visualization. Extant verbal research has shown how organizations can be run through silence (Anteby, 2013), that ignorance can be generative (Essén, Knudsen, & Alvesson, 2021), and that secrecy can be a resource for organizing (Toegel, Levy, & Jonsen, 2021). Wandering around the page of a book, a multimodal dashboard, or indeed the architectural drawings in Comi and Whyte (2018) allows us to see visualizations as imagines agentes (active images) that demand a continuous negotiation of imaginary futures rather than imposing a shared view of the future.…”

Section: The Visual Manifestation Of Reality: Beyond the Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond the Visible, the Material and the Performative: Shifting Perspectives on the Visual in Organization Studies

Quattrone

Ronzani

Jancsary

et al. 2021

Organization Studies

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Visual organizational research has burgeoned over the past decade. Despite an initially hesitant engagement with visuality in organization and management studies, it is now only proper to speak of a ‘visual turn’ in this domain of scholarly inquiry. We wish to take the opportunity provided by the Perspectives format to engage with prominent work published in Organization Studies, in appreciation of the diversity of approaches to the visual in organizational research, and highlight some generative tensions across this body of work. In particular, we have scrutinized six articles based on their treatment of signification (how the visual mode enables meaning-making and meaning-sharing in and around organizations), manifestation (how visual organizational artefacts and their properties relate to affordances) and implication (how visualization practices produce organizational outcomes). Inspired by the frictions and gaps across these articles, we developed three distinct perspective shifts that highlight the importance of the invisible, the immaterial and the performance within visualization. We conclude with a comparative matrix that maps different conceptualizations of visualization, and suggest opportunities for future research based on how we see the field of visual organizational studies evolving.

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“…Level of formal control and (un)managed transparency practices. Current discussions of managed transparency often assume that executives can leverage sufficient amounts of formal control to exert influence (Christensen & Cheney, 2015;Costas & Grey, 2014;Toegel, Levy, & Jonsen, 2021). While this might often be true, we should not forget that some organizations (e.g.…”

Section: Theorizing the Impact Of (Un)managed Transparency And The Or...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Unmanaged Transparency in a Digital Society: Swiss army knife or double-edged sword?

Reischauer

Ringel

2022

Organization Studies

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Facing increasing demands for transparency, more and more organizations have embraced managed forms of information disclosure that rely on digital technologies. However, when doing so, they tend to create an idealized self-presentation for their audiences. Aggravated by these attempts to undermine ‘true openness’, calls for a ‘hands-off’ approach to information disclosure – also known as unmanaged transsparency – have grown louder. Following this development, the paper conceptualizes organizations as sites of managed and unmanaged transparency practices and asks how these practices shape audience support and are affected by audiences. Empirically, we study a German political party from 2011 to 2017. Audiences initially supported the party’s commitment to unmanaged transparency but soon withdrew their support. Members in executive positions reacted by enacting multiple managed transparency practices to change the party’s negative public image. These efforts, however, were futile, and the party could not regain audience support. We theorize this dynamic in a framework that draws attention to the impact of (un)managed transparency and the organizational environment on audience support. Overall, our study suggests that unmanaged transparency in a digital society is more like a double-edged sword rather than a Swiss army knife: organizations might profit from its positive effects on the audience’s support, but they also make themselves vulnerable by the high level of dissonance they put on display.

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Secrecy in Practice: How Middle Managers Promote Strategic Initiatives behind the Scenes

Cited by 24 publications

References 76 publications

The Relational Dynamics of Issue-Selling: Enacting Different Genres for Dealing with Discontent

The Relational Dynamics of Issue-Selling: Enacting Different Genres for Dealing with Discontent

Beyond the Visible, the Material and the Performative: Shifting Perspectives on the Visual in Organization Studies

Unmanaged Transparency in a Digital Society: Swiss army knife or double-edged sword?

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