Transparency (behavior)

Transparency, as used in science, engineering, business, the humanities and in a social context more generally, implies openness, communication, and accountability. Transparency is operating in such a way that it is easy for others to see what actions are performed. For example, a cashier making change at a point of sale by segregating a customer's large bill, counting up from the sale amount, and placing the change on the counter in such a way as to invite the customer to verify the amount of change demonstrates transparency.

Wages

In 2009, UK City minister Lord Myners proposed that the pay and identity of up to 20 of the highest-paid employees at British companies should be disclosed.^[1] In the UK, employees outside the boardroom are currently granted anonymity about their pay deals.^[1] He also called for the pay of all employees to be banded in grades. In his interim report in July, David Walker suggested that bankers' pay levels should be disclosed in bands and that the number of staff falling in each band be included.^[1] However, it is unlikely in the UK that disclosure requirements will be made a legal requirement, with hopes being placed on recommendations being undertaken voluntarily.^[1]

Regulations in Hong Kong require banks to list their top earners – without naming them – by pay band.^[1]

In Norway and in Sweden, tax authorities annually release the "skatteliste" or "tax list"; official records showing the annual income and overall wealth of nearly every taxpayer.^[2]

In 2009, the Spanish government for the first time released information on how much each cabinet member is worth, but data on ordinary citizens is still private.^[2]

Management

Radical transparency is a management method where nearly all decision making is carried out publicly. All draft documents, all arguments for and against a proposal, all final decisions, and the decision making process itself are made public and remain publicly archived. Two examples of organizations utilizing this style are the GNU/Linux community and Indymedia.

Corporate

Corporate transparency, a form of radical transparency, is the concept of removing all barriers to —and the facilitating of— free and easy public access to corporate information and the laws, rules, social connivance and processes that facilitate and protect those individuals and corporations that freely join, develop, and improve the process.^[3] This is the exact opposite of how medical insurance companies operate when dealing with medical practitioners and members of their insurance plan.^{[citation needed]}

Non-governmental organizations

Accountability and transparency are of high relevance for non-governmental organisations (NGOs). In view of their responsibilities to stakeholders, including donors, sponsors, programme beneficiaries, staff, states and the public, they are considered to be of even greater importance to them than to commercial undertakings.^[4] Yet these same values are often found to be lacking in NGOs.^[4]

The International NGO Accountability Charter, linked to the Global Reporting Initiative, documents the commitment of its members international NGOs to accountability and transparency, requiring them to submit an annual report, among others.^[5][6] Signed in 2006 by 11 NGOs active in the area of humanitarian rights, the INGO Accountability Charter has been referred to as the “first global accountability charter for the non-profit sector”.^[7] In 1997, the One World Trust created an NGO Charter, a code of conduct comprising commitment to accountability and transparency.^[8]

Media

Media Transparency is the concept of determining how and why information is conveyed through various means. If the media and the public knows everything that happens in all authorities and county administrations there will be a lot of questions, protests and suggestions coming from media and the public. People who are interested in a certain issue will try to influence the decisions. Transparency creates an everyday participation in the political processes by media and the public. One tool used to increase everyday participation in political processes is Freedom of Information legislation and requests. Modern democracy builds on such participation of the people and media. There are, for anybody who is interested, many ways to influence the decisions at all levels in society.^[9]

Politics

In politics, transparency is used as a means of holding public officials accountable and fighting corruption. When a government's meetings are open to the press and the public, its budgets may be reviewed by anyone, and its laws and decisions are open to discussion, it is seen as transparent, and there is less opportunity for the authorities to abuse the system for their own interests.^[10]

When military authorities classify their plans as secret, transparency is absent. This can be seen as either positive or negative; positive because it can increase national security, negative because it can lead to corruption and, in extreme cases, a military dictatorship.

While a liberal democracy can be a plutocracy, where decisions are made behind locked doors and the people have fewer possibilities to influence politics between the elections, a participative democracy is more closely connected to the will of the people.^{[citation needed]} Participative democracy, built on transparency and everyday participation, has been used officially in northern Europe for decades. In the northern European country Sweden, public access to government documents became a law as early as 1766. It has officially been adopted as an ideal to strive for by the rest of EU, leading to measures like freedom of information laws and laws for lobby transparency.

To promote transparency in politics, Hans Peter Martin, Paul van Buitenen (Europa Transparant) and Ashley Mote decided to cooperate under the name Platform for Transparency (PfT) in 2005. Similar organizations that promotes transparency are Transparency International and the Sunlight Foundation.

A recent political movement to emerge in conjunction with the demands for transparency is the Pirate Party, a label for a number of political parties across different countries who advocate freedom of information, direct democracy, network neutrality, and the free sharing of knowledge.

Online culture

21st century culture affords a higher level of public transparency than ever before, and actually requires it in many cases. People no longer have a high level of control over what is public information. Modern technology and associated culture shifts have changed how government works (see WikiLeaks), what information people can find out about each other, and the ability of politicians to stay in office if they are involved in sex scandals. This is particularly interesting for mental health professionals, whose clients can now find out their sexual orientation, home address, and many other pieces of personal information online (see digital divide for more info).

Research

Scholarly research in any academic discipline may also be labeled as (partly) transparent (or open research) if some or all relevant aspects of the research are open in the sense of open source,^[11] open access and open data,^[12] thereby facilitating social recognition and accountability of the scholars who did the research and replication by others interested in the matters addressed by it.^[13]

Some mathematicians and scientists are critical of using closed source mathematical software such as Mathematica for mathematical proofs, because these do not provide transparency, and thus are not verifiable.^[14] Open-source software such as Sage aims to solve this problem.^[15]

Technology

In the computer software world, open source software concerns the creation of software, to which access to the underlying source code is freely available. This permits use, study, and modification without restriction.

In computer security, the debate is ongoing as to the relative merits of the full disclosure of security vulnerabilities, versus a security-by-obscurity approach.

Sports

Sports has become a global business over the last century, and here, too, initiatives ranging from mandatory drug testing to the fighting of sports-related corruption are gaining ground based on the transparent activities in other domains.^[16]

Criticism

Among philosophical and literary works that have examined the idea of transparency are Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish or David Brin's The Transparent Society. The German philosopher and media theorist Byung-Chul Han in his 2012 work Transparenzgesellschaft sees transparency as a cultural norm created by neoliberal market forces, which he understands as the insatiable drive toward voluntary disclosure bordering on the pornographic. According to Han, the dictates of transparency enforce a totalitarian system of openness at the expense of other social values such as shame, secrecy, and trust. He was crizicized for his concepts, as they would suggest corrupt politics and for referring to the anti-democratic Carl Schmitt.^[17]

Clare Birchall, Christina Gaarsten, Mikkel Flyverbom, and Mark Fenster among others, write in the vein of 'Critical Transparency Studies' which attempts to challenge particular orthodoxies concerning transparency. Birchall, assessed in an article "[...] whether the ascendance of transparency as an ideal limits political thinking, particularly for western socialists and radicals struggling to seize opportunities for change [...]". She argues that the promotion of 'datapreneurial' activity through open data initiatives outsources and interrupts the political contract between governed and government. She is concerned that the dominant model of governmental data-driven transparency produces neoliberal subjectivities that reduce the possibility of politics as an arena of dissent between real alternatives. She suggests that the radical Left might want to work with and reinvent secrecy as an alternative to neoliberal transparency.^[18]

Researchers at University of Oxford and Warwick Business School found that transparency can also have significant unintended consequences in the field of medical care. McGivern and Fischer found 'media spectacles' and transparent regulation combined to create 'spectacular transparency' which some perverse effects on doctors' practice and increased defensive behaviour in doctors and their staff.^[19][20] Similarly, in a four year organizational study, Fischer and Ferlie found that transparency in the context of a clinical risk management can act perversely to undermine ethical behavior, leading to organizational crisis and even collapse.^[21]

See also

References

External links

• The National Institute on Money in State Politics
• Transparency International
• Sunlight Foundation
• Democratic Transparency Party
• Transparency and Development

v t e Social and environmental accountability Ethics/ principles Aarhus Convention Corporate behavior citizenship social responsibility Ethical banking Ethical code Extended producer responsibility Organizational ethics Organizational justice Principles for Responsible Investment Social responsibility Stakeholder theory Sullivan principles Transparency (behavior social) UN Global Compact Social accounting Double bottom line Equality impact assessment Ethical Positioning Index Higg Index ISO 26000 Genuine progress indicator OHSAS 18001 Performance indicator SA8000 Social impact assessment Social return on investment Whole-life cost Environmental accounting Carbon accounting Eco-Management and Audit Scheme Emission inventory Environmental full cost accounting impact assessment management system profit and loss account ISO 14000 14031:1999 Life-cycle assessment Pollutant release and transfer register Sustainability accounting measurement metrics and indices standards and certification supply chain Toxics Release Inventory Triple bottom line Reporting Global Reporting Initiative GxP guidelines Sustainability reporting Auditing Community-based monitoring Environmental auditing Environmental certification Fair trade (certification) ISO 19011 Related Bangladesh Accord Benefit corporation Child labour Conflict of interest Disasters Disinvestment Eco-labeling Environmental pricing reform Environmental, social and corporate governance Ethical consumerism Euthenics Health impact assessment Market governance mechanism Product certification Public participation Social enterprise Socially responsible investing Stakeholder (engagement) Supply chain management Environment portal Category Commons Organizations