[!todo] Seed note. A starting point, not a finished note yet.
The transparency paradox is Ethan Bernstein’s 2012 finding (Administrative Science Quarterly) that maintaining observability of workers can reduce their performance, because being watched pushes people to conceal productive deviations and improvised fixes rather than defend them to management. In a field experiment at the second-largest mobile-phone factory in the world, hanging a curtain that gave a production line privacy from managers raised output 10 to 15%. It is the crucial counterpoint to Operational Transparency: Buell’s lateral, mutual visibility between customer and worker builds value, but Bernstein’s hierarchical surveillance destroys the psychological safety that experimentation needs. The distinction is direction, who is watching whom. Seeded from Operational Transparency.