Abstract
Craig R. Scott’s book challenges established views on what is an organization, just as it offers new ways of thinking about a number of salient contemporary issues, like organizational secrecy, transparency, communication and identity. The spirit of the book is perhaps best captured by the following quote from the concluding chapter: When we focus on what is big, formal, legal, visible, and/or well known, we can too often miss or even dismiss those organizations that are smaller, informal criminal, less visible, and/or largely unknown. Such oversight by organizational scholars seems ill-advised, especially in light of the substantial data suggesting the likely benefit in analyzing these hidden collectives as highly consequential organizations. (pp. 198–199)
Indeed, we agree with the author that organization studies can strongly benefit from exploring, mapping and further theorizing such hidden collectives as well as from illuminating the similarities and differences between these kinds of collectives and their more well-known and visible counterparts.
Following a preface, the book is divided into eight chapters. In Chapter 1, Scott convincingly makes the point that extant research on organizations has mainly investigated large, formal, and visible organizations. By focusing on organizational naming practices and visual elements such as the logo, organizational scholars have produced new insights about organizational branding, identity or image. However, this focus on what is visible and known can sometimes lead us to overlook what is less visible and less known. We become so enamored with the high-profile companies and the glitzy campaigns that we forget about those organizations that may be more discreet and/or not blitzing us with various commercial messages. (p. 2)
Scott persuasively argues that it is far from all organizations that wish to be identified to various audiences in the ways suggested by traditional literatures. Consequently, his ambitious task is to develop a framework that can help to depict and analyze those organizations that are ‘not playing the name game’ (p. 8).
Chapter 2 reviews the existing literature on hidden organizations. The chapter includes interdisciplinary scholarly work on secret societies and fraternal orders, criminal organizations, terrorist organizations, secret government agencies (including counterterrorism and intelligence organizations), informal sectors, backstreet businesses and anonymous support groups. Such hidden collectives display kinds of visibility and identity issues that are different from other and more transparent types of organizations. Their degree of social acceptability can vary, just as the significance of recruitment and loyalty can differ a lot. Crucial for the book’s argument, and reflecting the author’s origin in the field of organizational communication studies, it follows that hidden collectives face specific communication, identification and advertising problems.
Chapter 3 studies scholarly research on organizational identity, branding, reputation, image and stakeholders, demonstrating the limited interest in hidden organizations thus far. Yet these established bodies of work also provide occasional insights of relevance, for example in relation to the interfaces between knowledge and identity: ‘Knowledge issues are also crucial to defining one’s anonymity and assessing reputation. Additionally, this literature reminds us that these identity issues are not present and absent, but rather matters of degree’ (p. 79).
In Chapter 4, these insights are combined in a new framework for understanding and analyzing organizations. It is represented as a three-dimensional and cube-shaped model along the axes: (1) organizational visibility (anonymous versus recognized); (2) relevant audience (mass versus local) and (3) membership identification (expressed versus silent). Combined, these dimensions translate into a model with eight regions and four categories of organization (p. 99), which help to consider the different ways in which organizations relate to their various audiences (both externally and internally). Thus, the model allows us to map organizational phenomena and to analyze organizational activities in relation to ‘regions’, ranging from transparent to shaded, shadowed or dark.
The subsequent three chapters apply the framework to the study of organizations that operate in the regions from the transparent to the dark: Chapter 5 examines the extreme cases of transparent (or at least highly visible) organizations, on the one end, and dark organizations, on the other end, which represent radically different ways of communicating organizational identity to various audiences. Transparent organizations are generally recognized by the wider public, with members usually expressing their identification, which indicates a general audience. Examples include most multinational corporations, governmental agencies or non-governmental organizations (NGOs). In turn, dark organizations are more anonymous and members keep their affiliations silent. Examples include certain intelligence organizations, hate groups, secret societies, gangs and criminal groups. The following two chapters look at cases that fall between the two extremes. Chapter 6 analyzes ‘shaded organizations’, i.e. those organizations ‘hiding only a little’ (e.g. Scientology). Chapter 7 examines ‘shadowed organizations’, which are those organizations that fall ‘under the radar and out of the spotlight’ (including organizations as diverse as Alcoholics Anonymous, the hacker collective Anonymous or the Ku Klux Klan). The concluding chapter 8 seeks to draw broader conclusions and to discuss scholarly implications of the study.
Taken together, we believe Scott’s book makes a very valuable contribution to organization studies, as it helps to balance out an over-emphasis on the most visible organizations (which are more easily accessible to empirical study of course). Moreover, the book represents a laudable interdisciplinary effort by linking insights from organization studies and organizational communication, in particular, but also involving further neighbouring disciplines such as criminology or studies of the informal economy. Based on this broad collection of research, the book provides us with an insightful taxonomy and map of hidden organizations.
Finally, the book raises a series of important questions with implications for further research in the area of hidden organizations and beyond. First, considering the cube model, one can question whether the different examples are placed in the right ‘regions’ of the model. This invites scholars to further refine the categories as suggested by Scott—in order to advance our theoretical understanding of hidden organizations and their subtle differences. Second, while we believe the taxonomy of hidden organization represents an important contribution in its own right, the theoretical implications are yet to be further developed. With his book, Scott touches upon one of the core questions of organization studies, i.e. what is an organization (e.g. March and Simon, 1958). In this regard, Scott’s taxonomy can be fruitfully linked to most recent debates on the ontology of organizations. For instance, Ahrne and Brunsson’s notion of ‘partial organization’ (2011) critically questions to what extent elements such as membership, hierarchy or rules are essential to constitute an organization. Scott’s book can add to this debate by inviting us to rethink whether visibility is one of the constitutive criteria of organizations, or whether certain hidden organizations (such as the terrorist network al Qaeda or the hacker collective Anonymous) can only exist because of a special tension between invisibility and visibility. Third, there is no doubt that the concept of communication has a natural fit to the book’s discussions regarding transparency, (in)visibility and hiddenness. In future research, we believe these discussions would benefit from becoming strongly linked to recent theoretical advancements in the field of organizational communication studies and its emphasis on the ‘constitutive’ role of communication for organizations (e.g. Ashcraft et al., 2009).
To conclude, the novel perspective developed in Scott’s book makes a crucial and timely contribution to organization studies by providing refreshing and original insights into organizational dynamics that have remained understudied for decades.