Secrecy at Work: The Hidden Architecture of Organizational Life - Softcover

Costas, Jana

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0804798141 ISBN 13: 9780804798143

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 2016

Synopsis

Secrecy is endemic within organizations, woven into the fabric of our lives at work. Yet, until now, we've had an all-too-limited understanding of this powerful organizational force. Secrecy is a part of work, and keeping secrets is a form of work. But also, secrecy creates a social order―a hidden architecture within our organizations. Drawing on previously overlooked texts, as well as well-known classics, Jana Costas and Christopher Grey identify three forms of secrecy: formal secrecy, as we see in the case of trade and state secrets based on law and regulation; informal secrecy based on networks and trust; and public or open secrecy, where what is known goes undiscussed. Animated with evocative examples from scholarship, current events, and works of fiction, this framework presents a bold reimagining of organizational life.

About this title

About the Author

Jana Costas is Professor of People, Work and Management at the European University Viadrina, Germany. Christopher Grey is Professor of Organization Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London and Visiting Professor at Université Paris-Dauphine. He is the author of A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book about Studying Organizations (2012) and Decoding Organization (2013).

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Secrecy at Work

The Hidden Architecture of Organizational Life

By Jana Costas, Christopher Grey

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2016 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8047-9814-3

Contents

Acknowledgments, 
Introduction: The Plan, 
1. Laying the Theoretical Foundations, 
2. Bricks and Mortar: From Organizing Secrecy to Secrecy as Organizing, 
3. Walls and Corridors: Organizing Formal Secrecy, 
4. Open and Closed Doors: Organizing Informal and Public Secrecy, 
5. The Hidden Architecture of Organizational Life, 
Conclusion: Finishing Touches, 
Notes, 
Works Cited, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Laying the Theoretical Foundations

IN HIS 1925 NOVEL THE TRIAL, Franz Kafka describes how after his unexpected arrest for an unspecified offence, Josef K. enters the secret world of the court system with its own laws, proceedings, and dynamics — a world that is unknown and nonsensical to him, yet at the same time increasingly absorbing. As Josef K. seeks to gather information and confront the court, he faces only closed doors: documents related to cases remain locked in the advocate's drawer because "official secrets were involved." The entire proceedings are "kept secret not only from the public but from the defendant too," placing him in a continual state of worry, uncertainty, and distrust. Even within the "endless" hierarchical structure of the court, "beyond comprehension even of the initiated, court proceedings were in general kept secret from minor officials and only those higher up the hierarchy followed them." Despite his various efforts, until the end this organizational world full of secrecy remains an absurd "theatre" to Josef K. that, however, takes complete control over him.

Kafka's novel parallels the observations of the German sociologist Max Weber, who, writing at around the same time as Kafka, points to the prevalence of "official secrets" in bureaucracies. One can also read in Kafka's novel the fear of the existence of a secret powerful elite working behind the scenes — such a link between secrecy and power underlies the writings of Elias Canetti. The Trial provides a powerful description of how, as theorized by Georg Simmel, another German sociologist and Kafka contemporary, a separate reality can be created through secrecy with boundaries between the initiated and outsiders. This entails the creation of a dramaturgical reality, as described in the writings of the American social psychologist Erving Goffman on social interactional practices.

So The Trial not only constitutes one example of how secrecy is deeply ingrained in our social and cultural imaginations; it also points to different aspects of its various theorizations in social science. These theorizations of secrecy are the focus of this chapter. We trace secrecy in the works of in particular, Max Weber, Elias Canetti, Georg Simmel, Erving Goffman, Michael Taussig, and Eviator Zerubavel. Although secrecy is not central in all these writings, together they provide complementary insights on the diverse nature of secrecy as well as its varied social dynamics, conditions, and consequences. We do not give a detailed discussion of the work of these authors but rather draw out the key insights from what they write about secrecy and also introduce some of the conceptual terminology we use. From this, we develop seven "foundations" that guide our subsequent analysis of organizational secrecy.

SECRETS AND POWER: BEYOND FUNCTIONALITY

Let us begin by turning to one of the fo

Edition details

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0804798141
• ISBN 13: 9780804798143
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 214