The "Hidden Architecture" of Organizations: A Study of Organizational Secrecy (ORGSEC)
Abstract:
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.
Type:
EU
Funder:
Seventh Framework Programme
Department:
Department of Intercultural Communication and Management
Status:
Finished
Start Date:
01-10-2013
End Date:
30-09-2015