Playing the numbers game: Dealing with transparency

This paper unpacks the performativity of transparency inside the organization. Organizational members often use digital techno logie s to make their actions visible to o thers in the organization. However, practices of visibility produce opaque ness as much as transparency. In our qualitative study in a telecommunications organization, organizatio nal members so metime s made their actio ns transparent to their colleagues and managers, while at other times they played numbers games and made their actions opaque. We take a sociomaterial perspectiv e and investigate how practic es of visibility are performed by organizational members while using digital techno logies. We consider the temporality of visibility making practices, to better understand how they emerge and how they produce transparency and opaqueness. We illustrate how transparency and o paqueness are produced interc hangeably, as ac tors are oriented towards the past, present, or future. The study extends our understanding of informatio n visibility inside organizations, by bringing to the foreground its sociomaterial and temporal nature.