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General discussion
5.2.3 The need to study transparency in workplace research
Scholars may also learn from this dissertation that transparency is a valuable concept to consider in research on digital work and workplaces. I give an impetus to research on workplace transparency by taking a first step towards conceptualizing and operationalizing this “elusive” concept (Bernstein, 2017, p. 229). Adding to the literature on workplaces, this dissertation conceptualizes and studies transparency in different circumstances and its consequences for workers. For one, within workplaces, transparency concerned information about the role and ongoing work (chapter 4) in order to share ideas effectively. Literature on workplaces has largely overlooked transparency or viewed it implicitly as part of the context when studying open offices.
Furthermore, this dissertation extends the literature on digital work by moving the concept of transparency from the context within a work location (chapter 4) to across work locations (chapter 3). Specifically, in chapter 3, I found that as workers’ repertory of workplaces broadened toward including more physical and digital places, workers experienced their colleagues’ whereabouts to be opaquer (or reduced locational transparency). This was experienced as a hindrance to maintaining relationships at work despite the availability and knowledge of digital technology, as shown in the case of TechSub presented in chapter 3. This shows that each digital worker presents a moving piece in the network of their organization. And as workers can work increasingly mobile and remote to each other (Barley et al., 2017; Kiesler & Cummings, 2002; Porter & van den Hooff, 2020), alignment of these movements is crucial. This is particularly relevant as organizations adapt to the growing interrelatedness of our jobs (Khazanchi et al., 2018).
Taken together, the findings of this dissertation point towards including transparency as a concept in a similar way as privacy or crowding, which are both described as perceptual office dimensions (Khazanchi et al., 2018). I suggest that these findings invite future research to study
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