This document discusses the rise of transparency and the use of numbers and metrics to quantify individuals. It makes three key points: 1. Transparency allows others like doctors, HR managers, and schools to access information about individuals in order to categorize them, shape their identity, and force them to act upon themselves. 2. Metrics like credit scores, friend counts, and academic indexes both position individuals in relation to others and shape norms of what is considered good or successful, leading individuals to self-engineer themselves. 3. Transparency has become transnational as a few centralized rating agencies and index creators now dominate by producing standardized measures of evaluation that govern institutions but lack democratic legitimacy and reinforce constant measurement.

1. MARIE LAURE DJELIC
ESSEC BUSINESS SCHOOL

2. Radical Transparency
Numbers and the Self
Transnational Centers
of Calculation

5. H3
G-index: ??
Hindex:22
40+
Medical
Numbers
Credit
Score
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MARIE LAURE DJELIC

6.  Provision of information on MYSELF
• Allowing OTHERS to ACT (doctors, HR managers,
School Deans…)
 Categorization and Identity Construction
• Allowing OTHERS AND MYSELF to KNOW ME,
recognize me and connect with me
 Transparency
and selfgovernance/governmentality
• Forcing MYSELF TO ACT on myself

8. 5000
4500
4000
3500
3000
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
1983 – 2009 – article count for transparency and transparent - The Financial Times, The New York Times, The
Economist (United Kingdom), International Herald Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post) –
Source: Factiva
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
1996
1995
1994
1993
1992
1991
1990
1989
1988
1987
1986
1985
1984
1983
0

10. Exposing the few to the many
Exposing the many to the few

11. 
Multiplicity and de-centralization of data and
information sources
• FROM CONTROL TO SURVEILLANCE

Self-generated and self-managed transparency
• FROM ACCOUNTABILITY TO SELF-MONITORING AND
RATING

Transparency with a strong governmentality
consequence at all levels
• FROM SOCIAL ENGINEERING TO SELF-ENGINEERING

12.  Multiple
levels of Panopticon(s)
• Where the few observe the many. Bentham – ”A
new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind”
 …AND
performative Synopticon
(Mathiesen 1997)
• Where the few infuse the many with particular
norms and codes of being and doing

13.  The
Shanghai Ranking:
• Positions a University in relation to others
• BUT as Universities turn this measure into a
TARGET, the Shanghai Ranking comes to also
shape and define the norm of WHAT IS A GOOD
University.
• And leads the University to take action to self-
reengineer itself.

14.  The
h-index:
• A tool allowing me and my evaluators to judge of
my performance
• BUT also an identity defining mechanism to be
maximized and optimized.
• From a tool to an end in itself? When we
strategize, as academics to produce WITH A
VIEW TO MAXIMIZE our h-index?

16.  Increasingly
transnational in reach
• Moody’s, Standards and Poor and Fitch Rating
have around 95% of the global rating business

17. 
Multiplicity – but of a Tocquevillian type??
“American society appears dynamic and agitated
because men and things change constantly but it also
appears monotonous because all those changes are
the same”
Tocqueville, De la Démocratie en Amérique

Do we have real competition or Metastandardization/Meta-convergence through time?

18.  Using
science as a legitimating tool
 In
the absence of democratic and political
representativity and legitimacy
 Can
only reinforce the production of
numbers, measures, systematic
categorization

19.  Govern
the traditional sources of
governing authorities (Central banks,
Universities, Nation-states….)

20. • Those who in fact RULE AND GOVERN today are the
(transnational) standard makers, the producers of those
systems of measures
• Who are they? What interests do they serve?
• How can they be questioned and challenged?

21.  ”Not
everything that counts can be counted
and not everything that can be counted
counts” Einstein.
transparency as domination… Back
to transparency as liberation?
 From
 How
do we bend/break the iron cage?