From Publishers Weekly
The idea behind the sexy title is that information technology, chiefly the Internet, puts corporate misbehavior on display as never before. Thanks to the Web, consumers can compare product info, disgruntled employees and whistleblowers can air dirty laundry and upload embarrassing documents, investors can get wind of financial shenanigans and activists of all stripes are able to publicize a company's environmental and social transgressions. When mobilized, these hawk-eyed "accountability webs" precipitate "vortex states" that send a company's reputation, and maybe its business, spiraling down the drain. To head off such PR catastrophes, the authors recommend a policy of "transparency," whereby companies disclose all possible information, a practice they feel boosts employee morale and performance, facilitates business partnerships, and helps responsible corporations attract socially conscious consumers and investors. Tapscott and Ticoll, authors of Digital Capital: Harnessing the Power of Business Webs, examine such obstacles to transparency as gene patenting and overextended copyrights, and discuss the misdeeds and controversies surrounding corporate megaliths like McDonalds and Coca-Cola. The book is really a restatement of the new "corporate sustainability vogue in management theory, which insists that social and environmental responsibility benefit the bottom line. The authors' sometimes turgid presentation, peppered with bewildering diagrams, gives it a New Economy gloss by invoking information theory, "network effects" and fulsome praise of knowledge workers and the Net Generation, for whom life is "an ongoing, massive multi-media research project." The premise, that the flow of information compels corporate accountability, is a dubious one; as the authors acknowledge, there was information aplenty about the problems at Enron and Worldcom, but these companies were never called to account until they went bankrupt. Still, high-minded executives will find much to enlighten and encourage them.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Business Week, October 13, 2003
Tapscott and Ticoll suggest demands for information give companies a new way to differentiate. A fresh and compelling thesis.
