Abstract
How can we understand secrecy as temporal processes in organization? How can we address the inherent dynamics between concealment and revelation over time? In this article, we build on an inherent and yet overlooked character of secrecy as temporal, and explore temporalization processes of secrecy. We suggest that secrecy should be reconceptualized as processes of simultaneous concealment and revelation in multiple temporalities. Drawing on such temporal sensitivity, we apply a history-laden analysis of four examples of archival stories as ongoingly completing processes of secrecy. The analysis sheds light on the paradoxical dynamics of secrecy in three interconnected ways: first, writing archival stories offer opportunities to mask and attack the concealed. Therefore, second, archival stories as the site and process that sustain secrecy can become the site where secrecy is revealed. In this sense, as the third way, secrecy is ongoingly and fragmentally formed, producing multiple and subjective experiences of time. This article also contributes to the methodological potential for using archival stories in organizational studies.
Highlights
Secrecy exists through the intertwining of different temporalities and has played a constitutive part in processes of wars, the formation, reproduction and overthrow of monarchies, and even the development of modern society itself
Among the limited studies on secrecy in organizations, we draw on temporal sensitivity, a rarely explained character of secrecy, as a platform to extend the conceptualization of secrecy as not solely a process for concealment
We argue that at the definitional level, secrecy should be recognized through its paradoxical nature as interlocking processes of simultaneous concealment and revelation in multiple temporalities
Summary
Secrecy exists through the intertwining of different temporalities and has played a constitutive part in processes of wars, the formation, reproduction and overthrow of monarchies, and even the development of modern society itself. Building on this understanding of time as interconnected temporal experiences, we use archival stories, namely writings of archives with elements of intentional concealment (i.e. the secrecy), rather than the missing of materials, as illustrative examples for our exploration of temporal processes.
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