Transparency

Transparency is an increasingly prominent research topic in many scholarly disciplines and offers valuable insights for organizational communication. This entry provides an overview of the historical background and identifies some themes that presently inform the transparency literature. The entry then outlines the most important dimensions of the concept of transparency by highlighting two paradigmatic positions underpinning contemporary research in this area: namely, informational approaches that focus on the sharing of information and the perceived quality of that information and social process orientations that explore the dynamics of transparency in organizational settings. The entry highlights emergent methodological and conceptual insights concerning transparency as a dynamic and paradoxical social process with performative characteristics – an approach that remains underexplored.