How Transparency via Digital Media can Sustain Liminal Business Practices in the Ethical Gray Zone

Within research on ethically problematic business practices, a majority of works rests on the assumption that transparency can work as effective deterrent against such wrongdoings. In this paper we problematize this premise by arguing that for liminal business practices in the ethical gray zone, an increased transparency of ethically problematic practices (e.g., via digital platforms) can actually be conducive and co-constitutive of these practices. To investigate this phenomenon, we conducted a qualitative empirical study of self-reports on a social media platform where users share experiences on how to best apply a liminal practice of ‘bribery-tipping’ to attain complimentary room upgrades in hotels. Our study identifies five main forms of legitimation of how users rhetorically frame the practice as a normal thing to do: legitimation through (1) strategizing, (2) analogizing, (3) routinizing, (4) calculating, and (5) authorizing. Furthermore, by drawing on methods of sequence analysis, we identify recurrent rhetorical patterns of how the practice is maintained. Our study makes three main contributions: First, we develop theoretical explanations on how the visibility and transparency provided by a digital platform helped sustain a liminal business practice despite its inherent ethical ambiguity. Second, on the empirical level we showcase the usefulness of online self-reports for studying the communicative dimension of ethically questionable business practices. Finally, on the practical level, our study implies rethinking measurements against organizational misconduct as a matter of collective meaning-making.