Content area

Abstract

Digital workplace technologies lead to increasing levels of transparency. This, however, can invoke tensions: On the one hand, transparency facilitates employee empowerment, and on the other hand, transparency drives employee surveillance and privacy concerns. Furthermore, transparency has traditionally been one-sided, with control vested in managers, leading to a panoptical scenario. The contemporary workforce demands empowerment and bidirectional, inverse transparency, which challenges the assumptions of agency theory. These tensions are pertinent challenges that are even more salient today. Following a design science research process, we examine how a technical solution could be designed to mitigate these tensions and overcome the panopticon. Drawing on the knowledge base of stewardship theory and the concept of inverse transparency, we derive design requirements, design principles, and design features for an artifact that instantiates inverse transparency and drives the movement to stewardship behavior. We develop three theoretical conjectures on the artifact’s implications on kernel theory and conclude by advancing a design theory on inverse transparency that guides the design of digital workplace technologies. Lastly, our study illuminates the emerging understanding of transparency-related challenges in the contemporary workforce and further contributes to the discourse with theoretical and design knowledge.

Details

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Business indexing term
Title
Inverse Transparency and the Quest for Empowerment through the Design of Digital Workplace Technologies
Volume
25
Issue
5
Pages
1212-1239
Publication year
2025
Publication date
Sep 2025
Section
Articles
Publisher
Association for Information Systems
Place of publication
Atlanta
Country of publication
United States
ISSN
15369323
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
Document type
Journal Article
Publication history
 
 
Online publication date
2024-09-05
Publication history
 
 
   First posting date
05 Sep 2024
ProQuest document ID
3114101492
Document URL
https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/inverse-transparency-quest-empowerment-through/docview/3114101492/se-2?accountid=208611
Copyright
Copyright Association for Information Systems 2025
Last updated
2025-01-10
Database
ProQuest One Academic