The focus of the enquiry is on the research question of how stakeholder claims for transparency work as a means to support responsibility in the international supply chain. Design/methodology/approach. This theoretical study analyses the relationship between stakeholder claims for corporate transparency and responsible business in the global context, and develops a conceptual model for further theoretical and empirical work.
The study finds that the call for corporate transparency is insufficient as a means to increase responsibility within international supply chains. The erroneous belief that stakeholder claims for transparency will lead to responsible behaviour, is identified as the ‘transparency fallacy’. The fallacy emerges from the denial of opacity in organisations and the blindness to the conditions of international supply chains (including complexity, distance, and resistance) that work against attempts to increase transparency.
For the published version: Gold, S. and Heikkurinen, P. (2017). Transparency Fallacy: Unintended Consequences of Stakeholder Claims on Responsibility in Supply Chains, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 10.1108/AAAJ-06-2015-2088.