Mikkel Flyverbom | Copenhagen Business School, CBS (original) (raw)

Books by Mikkel Flyverbom

While we witness a growing belief in transparency as an ideal solution to a wide range of societa... more While we witness a growing belief in transparency as an ideal solution to a wide range of societal problems, we know less about the practical workings of transparency as it guides conduct in organizational and regulatory settings. This article argues that transparency efforts involve much more than the provision of information and other forms of 'sunlight', and are rather a matter of managing visibilities than providing insight and clarity. Building on actor-network theory and Foucauldian governmentality studies, it calls for careful attention to the ways in which transparency ideals are translated into more situated practices and become associated with specific organizational and regulatory concerns. The article conceptualizes transparency as a force that shapes conduct in organizational and socio-political domains. In the second section, this conceptualization of transparency as a form of 'ordering' is substantiated further by using illustrations of the effects of transparency efforts in the internet domain.

Papers by Mikkel Flyverbom

Abstract:The ubiquity of digital technologies and the datafication of many domains of social life... more Abstract:The ubiquity of digital technologies and the datafication of many domains of social life
raise important questions about governance. In the emergent field of internet governance
studies, most work has explored novel governance arrangements, institutional developments
and the effects of interactions among public and private actors in the emergence of the internet
as a matter of concern in global politics. But the digital realm involves more subtle forms of
governance and politics that also deserve attention. In this paper, I suggest that the 'ordering'
effects of digital infrastructures also revolve around what I term the ‘management of visibilities’.
Drawing on insights from science and technology studies and sociologies of visibility, the paper
articulates how digital technologies afford and condition ordering through the production of
visibilities and the guidance of attention. The basic tenet of the argument is that there is an
intimate relationship between seeing, knowing and governing, and that digitalisation and
datafication processes fundamentally shape how we make things visible or invisible, knowable
or unknowable and governable or ungovernable. Having articulated this conceptual argument,
the article offers a number of illustrations of such forms of ordering.

Keywords: Internet governance, Science and technology studies (STS), Sociology, Datafication, Visibilities

How do the discourses of participation inform deployment of information and communication technol... more How do the discourses of participation inform deployment of information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D)? Discourses here mean narratives that assign roles to actors, and specify causes and outcomes for events. Based on the theory and practice of international development we identify two dimensions to participation and ICT4D: whether participation 1) is hierarchical/top-down or agent-driven/bottom-up, and 2) involves conflict or cooperation. Based on these dimensions we articulate four ideal types of discourse that permeate ICT and development efforts: stakeholder-based discourses that emphasize consensus, networked efforts among actors collaborating in network arrangements, mobilization discourses that account for contestation over meanings of participation, and oppositional discourses from 'grassroots' actors that also include conflict. We conclude that ICT4D efforts, depending on the context of their implementation, are permeated by multiple discourses about participation. Our four ideal types of participation discourses are, therefore, useful starting points to discuss the intricate dynamics of participation in ICT4D projects.

The claim that big data can revolutionize strategy and governance in the context of international... more The claim that big data can revolutionize strategy and governance in the context of international relations is increasingly hard to ignore. Scholars of international political sociology have mainly discussed this development through the themes of security and surveillance. The aim of this paper is to outline a research agenda that can be used to raise a broader set of sociological and practice-oriented questions about the increasing datafication of international relations and politics. First, it proposes a way of conceptualizing big data that is broad enough to open fruitful investigations into the emerging use of big data in these contexts. This conceptualization includes the identification of three moments contained in any big data practice. Second, it suggests a research agenda built around a set of subthemes that each deserve dedicated scrutiny when studying the interplay between big data and international relations along these moments. Through a combination of these moments and subthemes, the paper suggests a roadmap for an international political sociology of data practices

Page 1. v Contents List of Table and Figures vii Preface viii Notes on Contributors ix 1 Investig... more Page 1. v Contents List of Table and Figures vii Preface viii Notes on Contributors ix 1 Investigating the Disaggregation, Innovation, and Mediation of Authority in Global Politics 1 Hans Krause Hansen Part I The Disaggregation of Authority 2 Disaggregating Authority in Global Governance 27 Tony Porter 3 Governing Regulative Networks Beyond the State 51 Hans Peter Olsen 4 Internet Regulation – Multi-Stakeholder Participation and Authority 72 Mikkel Flyverbom and Sven Bislev Part II The Innovation of Authority ...

The first part of the chapter discusses how digitization, datafication and other developments in ... more The first part of the chapter discusses how digitization, datafication and other developments in the realm of digital technologies underpin societal diagnoses that often conflate a range of distinguishable phenomena, operate at a very high
level of abstraction and distance to the processes they describe. On this backdrop, we argue for the value of a more fine-grained, analytical approach that takes us closer to the operational and practical workings of big data. In particular, more situated and conceptual discussions of the operations and mechanisms at
work may help us grasp some of the novel political, social, and economic conditions resulting from big data without resorting to overly abstract and distant diagnoses. The chapter develops a typology of the social practices and forms of valuation
involved in the production of big data analyses – focusing on the following four moments: Production, Structuring, Distribution & Visualization.

Global Networks, 2010

The rapid growth of internet users and the importance of networked technologies for most spheres ... more The rapid growth of internet users and the importance of networked technologies for most spheres of life raise questions about how to foster and govern the digital revolution on a global scale. Focusing on internet governance and the use of ICTs for development purposes, I provide a multi-sited, ethnographic exploration of two UN-based multi-stakeholder arrangements -comprising governments, business and civil society groups -that have contributed to the construction of the digital revolution as an object of global governance. In this article I show how analytical insights from governmentality studies and actor-network theory can be used to capture how objects of governance and organizational arrangements are constructed and consolidated. Conventional approaches to networks and governance tend to treat organizational arrangements and issue areas as bounded, separate and fixed. By contrast, I demonstrate the merits of a practice-oriented, relational and agnostic research strategy, which foregrounds the governmental techniques and moments of translation involved when new objects and modes of governance are assembled and negotiated.

Although transparency is often believed to mitigate the negative effects of power by providing ac... more Although transparency is often believed to mitigate the negative effects of power by providing access to the hidden sides of organizational and political life, extant research fails to specify how transparency more fundamentally relates to power. To make sense of this relationship, this article develops
an analytical language along two dimensions: “observational control” and “regularizing control.” Within this framework, we look at (a) attempts to carry out control through observation, (b) identity-oriented forms of normative control, (c) strategically ambiguous articulations of transparency, and (d) attempts to normalize and institutionalize behavior across organizational settings through the use of reporting and ranking systems. In
the concluding section, we discuss how our conceptualization might nuance and enrich future studies of the transparency–power nexus and we point to some important implications for management practitioners.
Keywords:
transparency, observational control, regularizing control, strategic ambiguity,
power
Mikkel Flyverbom1, Lars Thøger Christensen1,
and Hans Krause Hansen1
Abstract
Although transparency is often believed to mitigate the negative effects of
power by providing access to the hidden sides of organizational and political
life, extant research fails to specify how transparency more fundamentally
relates to power. To make sense of this relationship, this article develops
an analytical language along two dimensions: “observational control” and
“regularizing control.” Within this framework, we look at (a) attempts
to carry out control through observation, (b) identity-oriented forms of
normative control, (c) strategically ambiguous articulations of transparency,
and (d) attempts to normalize and institutionalize behavior across
organizational settings through the use of reporting and ranking systems. In
the concluding section, we discuss how our conceptualization might nuance and enrich future studies of the transparency–power nexus and we point to some important implications for management practitioners.

Keywords:
transparency, observational control, regularizing control, strategic ambiguity,
power

Our special issue on transparency has been published by European Journal of Social Theory - see m... more Our special issue on transparency has been published by European Journal of Social Theory - see more here: http://est.sagepub.com/content/current

Recent scholarship provides the opportunity for an assessment of the underexplored but promising ... more Recent scholarship provides the opportunity for an assessment of the underexplored but promising marriage between science and technology studies (STS) and Internet governance (IG) research. This article seeks to provide such an assessment by reviewing and discussing, in particular, three only incompletely so far, but are crucial to understand today's governance of the Internet as a complex sociotechnical system of systems. In their research, STS scholars of IG highlight the day-to-day, mundane practices that constitute IG; the plurality and ''networkedness'' of hybrid devices and arrangements that populate, shape, and define IG processes; the performative function of these arrangements vis-à-vis the virtual, yet very material, worlds they seek to regulate; the invisibility, pervasiveness, and agency of infrastructure.

This article analyses the complex work of human actors and technologies that goes into producing ... more This article analyses the complex work of human actors and technologies that goes into producing that which appears to us as 'transparent'. Drawing on studies of governance and surveillance, affordance theory, actor-network theory and sociological work on numbers, we analyse the role played by mediating technologies in the production of transparency and relate it to the question of how knowledge is created, recycled and modified in organizational settings. This perspective is largely absent from existing research on transparency, which construes transparency as unmediated or fails to investigate the organizing properties of specific mediating technologies. We argue that mediating technologies, conceptualized here as disclosure devices, have distinctive organizing properties that are important to scrutinize. They play a central role in attempts to shed light on objects, subjects and practices, and to help build or break up relationships within and across sites and organizations. We focus on three disclosure devices and their respective knowledge creation processes: (a) due diligence, whose emphasis is on qualitative knowledge production; (b) rankings, which is about quantitative knowledge production; (c) big data analysis, which underscores algorithmic knowledge production. We conceptualize the distinct features of these disclosure devices, indicate ways in which they shape organizational processes and discuss some of the ethical and political challenges they pose.

Whenever a new valuable object is discovered or created, questions about politics always arise. T... more Whenever a new valuable object is discovered or created, questions about politics always arise. The digital revolution, spurred by the rise of the Internet, is more than a technological and business issue; it is also a political domain. Mikkel Flyverbom's The Power of Networks: Organizing the

Science and Public Policy, Jan 1, 2012

Science Studies-an Interdisciplinary Journal for …, Jan 1, 2007

Transnational private governance and its limits, edited by Jean-Christophe Graz and Andreas Nölke

Globalization is usually understood as a structural, epochal condition altering the environment i... more Globalization is usually understood as a structural, epochal condition altering the environment in which people, organizations, and societies operate. But such accounts offer little insight into the infrastructures, practices, and connections that facilitate the production of the global. This article uses findings from an ethnographic study of tax planning to show how mundane practices and connectivities forge and organize global operations, and to argue for the value of analyzing processes of globalization in terms of assemblages and infrastructures. Empirically, the article captures how the making of 'tax structures' involves connecting, for instance, buildings in France, a human in Switzerland, a company in Denmark, various tax laws, a trust fund in New Zealand, and large amounts of money on the move. If studied along the lines of an analytics of 'globalizing assemblages', such financial objects can help us capture how the global is produced and navigated in finance and beyond. By engaging with these questions, the article contributes conceptually, methodologically, and empirically to current attempts at rethinking globalization, and provides novel insights into the practices and entanglements involved in globalized and globalizing financial activities.

Keywords: Internet governance, Science and technology studies (STS), Sociology, Datafication, Visibilities

Global Networks, 2010

Keywords:
transparency, observational control, regularizing control, strategic ambiguity,
power

Science and Public Policy, Jan 1, 2012

Science Studies-an Interdisciplinary Journal for …, Jan 1, 2007

Transnational private governance and its limits, edited by Jean-Christophe Graz and Andreas Nölke

Tidsskriftet Politik, Jan 1, 2008

King’s College London 14-15 May, 2015 In the wake of the Snowden revelations about the surveill... more King’s College London
14-15 May, 2015

In the wake of the Snowden revelations about the surveillance capabilities of intelligence agencies, this interdisciplinary symposium gathers experts to discuss the place and implications of secrecy in contemporary culture and politics.

Thursday 14th May
6.30-8.30
Opening Talk: Jamie Bartlett, Demos, Author of The Dark Net
Respondent, Zach Blas on the ‘Contra-Internet’
Edmond J. Safra Lecture Theatre, The Strand Campus, King’s College London
Free Registation at: https://secretsofdarknet.eventbrite.co.uk/

15 May: Symposium
Free registration at: https://politicsofsecrecy.eventbrite.co.uk/

9-9.15
Introduction: Secrecy’s Frame
Clare Birchall (King’s College London) & Matt Potolsky (University of Utah)

9.15-10.45
Roundtable 1: Between Opacity and Openness

Mark Fenster (College of Law, University of Florida)
(Secrecy and the Hypothetical State Archive)

Zach Blas (Artist, University of Buffalo)
(Informatic Opacity)

Mikkel Flyvverbom (Intercultural Communication and Management, Copenhagen Business School)
(Transparency and the Management of Visibilities)

Vian Bakir (Creative Studies and Media, Bangor University)
(Deceptive Organised Persuasive Communication: (a) Misdirection and (b) Secretly Altering Reality to Fit the Lie you want to Tell)

11.15-12.30
Roundtable 2: Aesthetics of the Secret

John Beck (Institute of Modern & Contemporary Culture, University of Westminster)
(Photography’s Open Secret)

Neal White (Artist, Bournemouth University)
(Secrecy and Art in Practice)

Clare Birchall (American Studies, King’s College London)
(Art “After” Snowden)

12.30-1.30
Lunch

1.30-3.00
Roundtable 3: Open Secrets

Jack Bratich (Communication and Information, Rutgers University)
(Spectacular Secrecy and the Public Secret Sphere: Rumsfeld, Anonymous, and Snowden)

Deme Kasimis (Political Science, Yale University)
(Passing as Open Secrecy: Migrants and the Performance of Citizenship in Classical Greek Thought)

Adam Piette (English, Sheffield University)
(The Open Secret of Nuclear Waste)

Matt Potolsky (English, University of Utah)
(Beyond Fiction: The NSA and Representation)

3.30-4.45
Roundtable 4: Covert Spheres

Timothy Melley (English, Miami University)
(The Democratic Security State: Operating Between Secrecy and Publicity)

Øyvind Vågnes (Visual Culture, University of Copenhagen)
(Drone Warfare and the Language of Precision)

Hugh Urban (Comparative Studies, Ohio State)
(The Silent Brotherhood: Secrecy, Violence, and Surveillance from the Brüder Schweigen to the War on Terror)

5.00-5.30
Summary: Secrecy’s Future

Digital transformations and processes of ''datafication'' fundamentally reshape how information i... more Digital transformations and processes of ''datafication'' fundamentally reshape how information is produced, circulated and given meaning. In this article, we provide a concept of ''datastructuring'' which seeks to capture this reshaping as both a product of and productive of social activity. To do this we focus on (1) how new forms of social action map onto and are enabled by technological changes related to datafication, and (2) how new forms of datafied social action constitute a form of knowledge production which becomes embedded in technologies themselves. We illustrate the potential of the datastructuring concept with empirical examples which also serve to highlight some new avenues for research and some empirical questions to explore further. We suggest a focus on datastructuring can ignite scholarly debates across disciplines that may share an interest in the technological configurations, sorting activities, and other socio-material forces that shape digital spaces, but which are rarely brought together. Such cross-disciplinary concep-tualizations may give more attention to how information is structured and organized, becomes ''algorithmically recog-nizable'', and emerges as (in)visible in digital, datafied spaces. Such a concept, we suggest, may help us better understand the novel ways in which ''backstage datawork'' and ''data sorting processes'' gain traction in political interventions, commercial processes, and social ordering. This article is a part of special theme on Knowledge Production. To see a full list of all articles in this special theme, please click here: http://journals.sagepub.com/page/bds/collections/knowledge-production.

Transparency is an increasingly prominent area of research that offers valuable insights for orga... more Transparency is an increasingly prominent area of research that offers valuable insights for organizational studies. However, conceptualizations of transparency are rarely subject to critical scrutiny and thus their relevance remains unclear. In most accounts, transparency is associated with the sharing of information and the perceived quality of the information shared. This narrow focus on information and quality, however, overlooks the dynamics of organizational transparency. To provide a more structured conceptualization of organizational transparency, this article unpacks the assumptions that shape the extant literature, with a focus on three dimensions: conceptualizations, conditions, and consequences. The contribution of the study is twofold: (a) On a conceptual level, we provide a framework that articulates two paradigmatic positions underpinning discussions of transparency, verifiability approaches and performativity approaches; (b) on an analytical level, we suggest a novel future research agenda for studying organizational transparency that pays attention to its dynamics, paradoxes, and performative characteristics.