Asking other departments for full visibility into their operations while offering the same into its own, a department makes disclosure the expected norm, and refusing it becomes hard to justify.
Borderline: whether this move is justified depends on the situation, and only the person in it can judge.
An example
When a private-equity-backed facilities services company bought a regional janitorial firm, the integration lead needed the acquired firm's customer margins, contract pricing, and staff ratings within a month to plan the first year. Her template went out with a second document attached: the parent's own integration plan, its regional margins, the criteria it would use for any staff reductions, and the date those decisions would be made. The acquired firm's general manager read both and returned the template in nine days, with notes on three contracts the parent's plan had misjudged. When he asked whether his supervisors were on any list, she told him none had been drafted, when one would be, and that he would see it first. The first-year plan kept two of his contracts that the parent had marked for exit.
Why it works
Offering the same disclosure in return removes the main reason to resist, so complying becomes easy and the request reads as routine practice. Refusal becomes hard to justify, because the asking side has already shown its own numbers; refusing looks worse and costs more, reading as defensiveness with no matching grievance. It depends on an asking side willing to open its own books, a culture that values transparency, and the standing to set the template. Without the offer, the same demand turns into one-way surveillance and draws the resistance that comes with it.
The thinking behind it
Michel Foucault Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975) describes power that works through observation and examination: people who can always be seen, and never know when, come to regulate themselves. A department that sees into others' operations gains something of that hold over them. Offering the same visibility in return turns surveillance into mutual accountability, which is why reciprocity is the clean form and one-way visibility breeds resistance.
Oliver E. Williamson Markets and Hierarchies: Analysis and Antitrust Implications (1975) builds on bounded rationality and opportunism, which Williamson later described as including incomplete or distorted disclosure, and treats organizations as means of safeguarding transactions against them. A request for full disclosure exposes whoever gives it to the receiver's opportunism. Disclosing your own plans and criteria first is a safeguard the other side can see, and it lowers their cost of complying.
When it fits
Integrations, new shared services, and central functions that need other units' data to do their work are the usual setting. It takes standing to set reporting templates, and the willingness and authority to open your own unit's operations, plans, and methods to the same degree. If you cannot disclose your side, the move is not available to you.
How to use it well
Offer first. Send your own disclosure with the request, in the same format and at the same level of detail, including the parts the other side will most want: your plans for them, your criteria, your dates. Explain what you will use their data for and who will see it. Agree a deadline together. When they ask something you cannot answer yet, say when you will. Escalate a refusal only after you have shown your side, and say in the escalation what you disclosed. Keep the exchange going after the first round, so disclosure becomes a habit in both directions.
What it costs and where it backfires
Openness exposes your own weaknesses: margins, plans, and judgments the other side can now challenge. Disclosure takes time on both sides, and data you ask for creates an obligation to use it well. The move breaks down when the demand runs one way while you keep material plans, such as a reduction list, from people entitled to know them, or when refusals are punished with frozen budgets. That version is concealment backed by pressure, and it is how integrations lose the people they paid for.
When it is used on you
Agree to disclose on condition of reciprocity, in writing: the same templates and level of detail in both directions, or a stated reason for each difference. Coordinate with peer units so the request is shared. If the asking side will not open its own books, take the asymmetry to the executive above both.