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Transparency has become a popular concept in management circles in recent years, no matter how little enthusiasm you may have for the word itself. Now the topic has been thrust into our everyday lives with disclosures, or leaks, of alleged US secret intelligence information by Edward Snowdon. Increasingly, we are asking ourselves "How much transparency is the right amount?"
Transparency is given credit for fostering trust among members of an organization, building loyalty among employees, and generally creating better places to work. For many years we observed need-to-know policies (that may have had their origins in the military) among managers of leading organizations. This slowly evolved in some organizations into policies that gave employees much more information about the activities of the enterprise and more voice in determining what they felt they needed to know.
Via The Learning Factor
Modern business theorists hail the open organization, but secrets between employers and employees are sometimes a good thing. What's the proper balance between transparency and opaqueness? asks Professor Jim Heskett .
Is there a transparency sweet spot? Some argue that transparency, especially in larger organizations, is susceptible to distrust and so only relevant information should be passed through the ranks. To me, this sounds like a fault in the culture, not in the practice in transparency.
For the most part, younger generations seem to embrace an open culture because they already feel that everything they say or do will eventually be made public. Still, is there such thing as being too transparent?