IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jbuset/v197y2025i1d10.1007_s10551-024-05763-3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Legitimating Organizational Secrecy

Author

Listed:
  • Nicholas Clarke

    (University of Kent Business School)

  • Malcolm Higgs

    (Birmingham City Business School)

  • Thomas Garavan

    (University College Cork)

Abstract

This paper brings into focus the concept of organizational secrecy by senior managers in the context of a major strategic change program. Underpinned by legitimation theory and utilizing a narrative methodology and a longitudinal investigation, we draw upon data from 52 interviews with 13 senior managers conducted at 3 months intervals over the course of 12 months. Our findings reveal that senior managers utilized seven discursive legitimation strategies to justify keeping secret that the organization intended to downsize, and they used a different mix of legitimation strategies as the change process evolved. We labeled these discursive legitimation strategies as (1) Naturalization, (2) Rationalization, (3) Moralization, (4) Authorization, (5) Proceduralization, (6) Valorization, and (7) Demonization. Theoretically we bring a temporal perspective to understanding organizational secrecy and the central role that discursive legitimation plays. We show that the use of these discursive legitimation strategies are anchored to meta-narratives describing work practices and values associated with the organization’s culture. And that managers use discursive legitimation to manage the ethical implications of secrecy.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicholas Clarke & Malcolm Higgs & Thomas Garavan, 2025. "Legitimating Organizational Secrecy," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 197(1), pages 19-38, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:197:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1007_s10551-024-05763-3
    DOI: 10.1007/s10551-024-05763-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-024-05763-3
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10551-024-05763-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Olivier Torres, 2011. "The silent and shameful suffering of bosses: layoffs in SME," International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 13(2), pages 181-192.
    2. Maria Joutsenvirta, 2013. "Executive Pay and Legitimacy: Changing Discursive Battles Over the Morality of Excessive Manager Compensation," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 116(3), pages 459-477, September.
    3. William Maria, 2006. "Brother Secret, Sister Silence: Sibling Conspiracies Against Managerial Integrity," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 65(3), pages 219-234, May.
    4. Dima Younes & David Courpasson & Marie-Rachel Jacob, 2020. "Ethics from Below : Secrecy and the Maintenance of Ethics," Post-Print hal-02312243, HAL.
    5. Matthew Caulfield, 2021. "Pay Secrecy, Discrimination, and Autonomy," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 171(2), pages 399-420, June.
    6. Stanley G. Harris, 1994. "Organizational Culture and Individual Sensemaking: A Schema-Based Perspective," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 5(3), pages 309-321, August.
    7. Guido Palazzo & Andreas Scherer, 2006. "Corporate Legitimacy as Deliberation: A Communicative Framework," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 66(1), pages 71-88, June.
    8. Maria Joutsenvirta, 2011. "Setting Boundaries for Corporate Social Responsibility: Firm–NGO Relationship as Discursive Legitimation Struggle," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 102(1), pages 57-75, August.
    9. Michelle Greenwood, 2013. "Ethical Analyses of HRM: A Review and Research Agenda," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 114(2), pages 355-366, May.
    10. Andrew J. Nelson, 2016. "How to Share “A Really Good Secret”: Managing Sharing/Secrecy Tensions Around Scientific Knowledge Disclosure," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 27(2), pages 265-285, April.
    11. Michel Anteby, 2008. "Identity Incentives as an Engaging Form of Control: Revisiting Leniencies in an Aeronautic Plant," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 19(2), pages 202-220, April.
    12. Thomas Olesen, 2024. "Breaking Out of the Cocoon: Whistleblowing Opportunities Under Conditions of Normalized Wrongdoing," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 191(1), pages 93-105, April.
    13. Siltaoja, Marjo, 2009. "On the discursive construction of a socially responsible organization," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 191-202, June.
    14. Nathalie Lallemand-Stempak, 2017. "Rethinking hybrids’ challenges: the case of French mutual insurance companies," Post-Print halshs-01935178, HAL.
    15. Bos, Brenda & Broekhuizen, Thijs L.J. & de Faria, Pedro, 2015. "A dynamic view on secrecy management," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 68(12), pages 2619-2627.
    16. Markus Kreutzer & Jorge Walter & Laura B. Cardinal, 2015. "Organizational control as antidote to politics in the pursuit of strategic initiatives," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(9), pages 1317-1337, September.
    17. Renate E. Meyer & Eero Vaara, 2020. "Institutions and Actorhood as Co‐Constitutive and Co‐Constructed: The Argument and Areas for Future Research," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(4), pages 898-910, June.
    18. Thurlow, Amy & Helms Mills, Jean, 2015. "Telling tales out of school: Sensemaking and narratives of legitimacy in an organizational change process," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 246-254.
    19. Niina Erkama & Eero Vaara, 2010. "Struggles over legitimacy in global organizational restructuring : a rhetorical perspective on legitimation strategies and dynamics in a shutdown case," Post-Print hal-02312530, HAL.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Maria Joutsenvirta, 2013. "Executive Pay and Legitimacy: Changing Discursive Battles Over the Morality of Excessive Manager Compensation," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 116(3), pages 459-477, September.
    2. Vuontisjärvi, Taru, 2013. "Argumentation and socially questionable business practices: The case of employee downsizing in corporate annual reports," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 292-313.
    3. Anu Pynnönen & Tuomo Takala, 2018. "The Discursive Dance: The Employee Co-operation Negotiations as an Arena for Management-by-fear," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 147(1), pages 165-184, January.
    4. Lauri Wessel & Riku Ruotsalainen & Henri A. Schildt & Christopher Wickert, 2023. "The Escalation of Organizational Moral Failure in Public Discourse: A Semiotic Analysis of Nokia’s Bochum Plant Closure," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 184(2), pages 459-478, May.
    5. Anne Vestergaard & Julie Uldam, 2022. "Legitimacy and Cosmopolitanism: Online Public Debates on (Corporate) Responsibility," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 176(2), pages 227-240, March.
    6. Adelaide Martins & Delfina Gomes & Manuel Castelo Branco, 2020. "Managing Corporate Social and Environmental Disclosure: An Accountability vs. Impression Management Framework," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(1), pages 1-15, December.
    7. Langlois, Jonathan & BenMahmoud-Jouini, Sihem & Servajean-Hilst, Romaric, 2023. "Practicing secrecy in open innovation – The case of a military firm," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(1).
    8. Jon Reast & François Maon & Adam Lindgreen & Joëlle Vanhamme, 2013. "Legitimacy-Seeking Organizational Strategies in Controversial Industries: A Case Study Analysis and a Bidimensional Model," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 118(1), pages 139-153, November.
    9. Matthew Caulfield, 2021. "Pay Secrecy, Discrimination, and Autonomy," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 171(2), pages 399-420, June.
    10. Pauline Schilpzand & David R. Hekman & Terence R. Mitchell, 2015. "An Inductively Generated Typology and Process Model of Workplace Courage," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 26(1), pages 52-77, February.
    11. Melissa Mazmanian & Christine M. Beckman, 2018. "“Making” Your Numbers: Engendering Organizational Control Through a Ritual of Quantification," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 29(3), pages 357-379, June.
    12. Fedorenko, Ivan & Berthon, Pierre & Edelman, Linda, 2023. "Top secret: Integrating 20 years of research on secrecy," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    13. Walid Cheffi & Sonia Abdennadher, 2019. "Executives’ Behaviour and Innovation in Corporate Governance: The Case of Internet Voting at Shareholders’ General Meetings in French Listed Companies," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 156(3), pages 775-798, May.
    14. Ulf H. Richter & Felix F. Arndt, 2018. "Cognitive Processes in the CSR Decision-Making Process: A Sensemaking Perspective," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 148(3), pages 587-602, March.
    15. Eline Jammaers, 2023. "Theorizing Discursive Resistance to Organizational Ethics of Care Through a Multi-stakeholder Perspective on Disability Inclusion Practices," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 183(2), pages 333-345, March.
    16. Niina Erkama & Jo Angouri, 2024. "Engaging, Distancing and Surrendering: Moral Legitimation of Controversial Organizational Decisions in the Media," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 194(1), pages 37-59, September.
    17. Vitaliy Roud & Thomas Wolfgang Thurner, 2018. "The Influence of State‐Ownership on Eco‐Innovations in Russian Manufacturing Firms," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 22(5), pages 1213-1227, October.
    18. Crass, Dirk & Garcia Valero, Francisco & Pitton, Francesco & Rammer, Christian, 2016. "Protecting innovation through patents and trade secrets: Determinants and performance impacts for firms with a single innovation," ZEW Discussion Papers 16-061, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    19. Irene Chu & Mai Chi Vu, 2022. "The Nature of the Self, Self-regulation and Moral Action: Implications from the Confucian Relational Self and Buddhist Non-self," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 180(1), pages 245-262, September.
    20. Islam, Muhammad Azizul & Deegan, Craig & Haque, Shamima, 2021. "Corporate human rights performance and moral power: A study of retail MNCs’ supply chains in Bangladesh," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:197:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1007_s10551-024-05763-3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.