We propose a new way of seeing the effects of organizational secrecy on employee reactions to workplace inequalities by bringing in key insights borrowed from communication science-i.e., that not all uncertainty management necessarily requires the reduction of uncertainty, and that ambiguity can be a more effective and desirable communication strategy than transparency or secrecy.

Across four studies-a qualitative multiple-case study, two survey studies, and an experiment-we show that several dimensions underlie the secrecy/transparency dichotomy, each of which exerting a separate influence on employee morale: concealment (vs. disclosure), intended ambiguity (vs. clarity), and perceived ambiguity (vs. clarity). Moreover, we report evidence for an apparent preference of ambiguity over clarity when it comes to workplace inequalities, both on the side of organizations and employees. Our findings offer a potential explanation for conflicting and unexpected findings in earlier studies on the effects of secrecy on employee morale.

We conclude with an ethical analysis of the secrecy/transparency dilemma, relating this phenomenon not only to organizational practice but also to research, as fully debriefing respondents in field studies of organizational secrets is often not possible.

Nicky Dries is a Research Professor (i.e., tenured Associate Professor with a focus on research-BOFZAP) at the KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (Belgium), and a Full Professor at BI Norwegian Business School in Oslo, Norway. She is also a Research Fellow at Vlerick Business School (Belgium). She conducted her doctoral research on talent management and (subjective) career success at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium), during which time she was also a visiting scholar at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (the Netherlands). She obtained her doctoral degree in December of 2009, after which she took up a postdoc position at the KU Leuven. Since then, she has been a visiting scholar at the University of Tilburg (the Netherlands), at Wirtschaftsuniversität Vienna (Austria), at Reykjavik University (Iceland), at IESE (Barcelona), at BI Norwegian Business School (Oslo), and at TUM München (Germany).

In addition, Nicky was a Fulbright scholar at Boston University School of Management (US) in 2012. Nicky has published articles in international journals in the areas of career management, human resource management, and industrial-organizational psychology. She is an Associate Editor at Applied Psychology: An International Review, and is on the editorial boards of Journal of Vocational Behavior (JVB), Journal of World Business (JW)), and European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology (EJWOP). She is an evaluator for the Research Foundation-Flanders (FWO), as a member of Expert Panel G&M3: Psychology, Pedagogy, Didactics and Social Work, and for the Academy of Finland’s Strategic Research Council (SRC) as a member of the Expert Panel Knowledge, Know-how and the Changing Working Life. In 2016, Nicky was selected to be featured on AcademiaNet, the European database of leading women in science.

Nicky’s primary research interests are employee talent, potential, and success-and more broadly, the interplay of organizational-strategic and individual-psychological factors in shaping careers. She is frequently invited to lecture on these topics nationally and internationally, both in the academic and the business world. To date, she has been the main supervisor of five, and co-supervisor of two, doctoral research projects on talent management, as well as a co-supervisor of the Flemish Policy Research Centre Work and Social Economy (Steunpunt Werk en Sociale Economie). Nicky is an active member of the two largest cross-cultural projects within the field of career studies, i.e. 5C (Consortium for the Cross-Cultural Study of Contemporary Careers) and the Career Adaptability/Life Design project.