Secrecy as Organizing Uncertainty in Creative Processes

在这个项目中，我们探讨了组织保密的作用，即组织中的参与者故意向参与者隐瞒信息，以组织创造过程中的不确定性。经验表明，组织保密是在高度创新的组织中处理各种不确定性的一种流行方式：绝密的研究实验室，精心策划的基于保密的营销活动，以及通过保密防止信息泄露，仅举几个例子。然而，这种将保密作为创造性过程的关键组织原则的经验盛行与当前的管理研究背道而驰，后者在很大程度上倾向于强调知识和信息共享对于培养创造力的重要性，从而将保密视为创造力的一个问题。相反，这个项目试图通过实证研究组织保密的实际做法来推动组织研究，组织保密是创造过程的一种组织机制，本身对创造力既没有好处也没有坏处。基于对一家音乐品牌和一家科技制药公司的深入、比较的案例研究，我们试图在三个重要且相互关联的方面推进现有的研究。首先，我们想要探索不同的保密模式(正式和非正式)被用来管理两个行业中不同类型的不确定性(即需求侧的不确定性、不确定的创新或信息泄露的风险)。其次，通过研究这两家公司的实际日常保密实践，我们希望通过参与者的观察，不仅作为减少不确定性(即防止信息泄露)的一种方式，而且作为在创造性过程中引入不确定性(即通过创建可使组织感到惊讶的孤立的创造性区域)的方式来提高当前关于保密的知识。最后，基于实证研究的洞察力，我们希望开发一个综合的概念框架，解释不同的组织保密模式如何以及为什么会导致不同的组织结果(即促进和/或抑制创造力)。因此，我们的目标是促进对保密的更复杂的理论理解，将保密作为一种组织创造过程中的不确定性的机制，通过确切地解释保密如何、为什么以及何时重要来超越目前关于保密重要的指控。

In this project we explore the role of organizational secrecy, the intentional concealment of information from actors by actors in organizations, for organizing uncertainty in creative processes. Empirical insights suggest that organizational secrecy is a popular way of dealing with different kinds of uncertainty among highly innovative organizations: top-secret research labs, orchestrated secrecy-based marketing campaigns, and the prevention of information leakage through secrecy to name but a few examples. However, this empirical prevalence of secrecy as a key organizing principle in creative processes runs counter to current management research, which largely tends to stress the importance of knowledge- and information-sharing for fostering creativity, thus framing secrecy as a problem for creativity. In contrast, this project seeks to advance organizational research by empirically studying actual practices of organizational secrecy as an organizing mechanism for creative processes that is per se neither good nor bad for creativity. Based on an in-depth, comparative case study of a music label and a technological pharmaceutical company, we seek to advance extant research in three important and interrelated ways. First, we want to explore what different modes of (formal and informal) secrecy are employed for the management of different kinds of uncertainty in the two industries (i.e. demand-side uncertainty, uncertain innovations, or risks of information leakage). Second, by studying the actual everyday secrecy-based practices through participant observations at the two companies, we want to advance current knowledge about secrecy not only as a way to reduce uncertainty (i.e. the prevention of information leakage), but also as way to induce uncertainty (i.e. by creating isolated zones of creativity that can surprise the organization) in creative processes. Finally, based on the insights of the empirical study, we want to develop an integrative conceptual framework explaining how and why different modes of organizational secrecy that feed into different uncertainty-inducing and -reducing practices can lead to different organizational outcomes (i.e. fostering and/or dampening creativity). Thus, we aim to contribute to a more sophisticated theoretical understanding of secrecy as a mechanism for organizing uncertainty in creative processes that goes beyond current allegations that secrecy matters by explicating exactly how, why and when it matters.