Corporate communication: the challenge of transparency

TLDR

Corporate communication assumes that organizations are inherently transparent to themselves and their surroundings, a premise that is increasingly questioned in contemporary practice. The study questions whether organizations truly exhibit transparency and seeks to redefine corporate transparency in strategic terms. The authors analyze transparency as both a condition and a strategy, deconstructing conventional assumptions and examining it as a staging process involving strategic disclosure, institutionalisation, and mimetic behaviour.

Abstract

When organizations set out to manage their communications in accordance with the corporate ideal, they seem to take for granted that they are transparent, not only to their surroundings but also to themselves. The notion of corporate communications, in other words, builds on the assumption that organizations are able to have a general view of themselves as communicating entities. But is this really the case? And, if not, is it possible to articulate the challenge of corporate transparency in alternative, strategic terms? Since contemporary organizations increasingly relate to their surroundings as if they are transparent, these and related questions are highly relevant in both theoretical and practical terms. Discusses the notion of transparency both as a condition and as a strategy, and deconstructs conventional assumptions associated with the use of the term. Looking at corporate transparency as a staging process that involves strategic disclosure, institutionalisation and mimetic behaviour, asks fundamental questions about organizational openness in an age of transparency.