Transparency and Innovation: From Transparency of Structure Towards Transparency of Actions

Abstract

In an age of unprecedented virtual, mediated, and distributed collaboration, information transparency and its effects on social interaction, knowledge sharing, and decision making has attracted tremendous scholarly interest in various disciplines, with mixed and often contradicting results. We argue that the current discourse – often implicitly – builds upon the assumption that transparency relates to static structures, which provide information that is perceived to be relevant, i.e. datasets from public entities. This is a simplistic view of a very dynamic concept. Following a conceptual overview of how static transparency is being defined, theoretically operationalized, and applied in current research and practice, we identify the shortcomings of adopting such a view and identify new research avenues for exploring dynamic transparency. Transparency, we find, is better applicable and related to (1) the processes, actions, and patterns of how communication and social relations evolve, (2) the dynamics of information, such as interactions between individuals when engaging in social networking, and (3) the process of how internal organizational data are collected, prepared before revealed, and what aspects of a design, or the evolution of decisions, are revealed to the public. Thus, by adopting a processual and dynamic transparency view, we believe that scholars and practitioners gain a more nuanced approach to the provision of information and the effects of dynamic transparency on social interaction, knowledge sharing, and decision making, which can be adopted in future practice and exploration of an emerging research paradigm.