The Naked Corporation: How the Age of Transparency Will Revolutionize Business [Anglais] [Relié]

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.

Tapscott and Ticoll suggest demands for information give companies a new way to differentiate. A fresh and compelling thesis.

Klaus Schwab Founder and President, World Economic Forum We need a corporate philosophy for the twenty-first century. Tapscott and Ticoll's book The Naked Corporation provides this -- not only the rationale for a transparent corporation but also the principles of leadership in an open world.

If you have to be naked, you had better be buff. We are entering an extraordinary age of transparency, where businesses must for the first time make themselves clearly visible to shareholders, customers, employees, partners, and society. Financial data, employee grievances, internal memos, environmental disasters, product weaknesses, international protests, scandals and policies, good news and bad; all can be seen by anyone who knows where to look. Welcome to the world of the naked corporation. Transparency is revolutionizing every aspect of our economy and its industries and forcing firms to rethink their fundamental values.

Don Tapscott, bestselling author and one of the most sought after strategists and speakers in the business world, is famous for seeing into the future and pointing out both its forest and its trees. David Ticoll, visionary researcher, columnist, and consultant, has identified countless breakthrough trends at the intersection of technology and business strategy. These two longtime collaborators now offer a brilliant guide to the new age of openness. In The Naked Corporation, they explain how the new transparency has caused a power shift toward customers, employees, shareholders, and other stakeholders; how and where information has exploded; and how corporations across many industries have seized on transparency not as a challenge but as an opportunity.

Drawing on such examples as Chiquita's total turnaround on matters of ethics, to Shell Oil's reinvention of itself as an environmentally focused business, to Johnson & Johnson's longstanding and carefully nurtured reputation as a company worthy of trust -- as well as little-known examples from pharmaceuticals, insurance, high technology, and financial services -- Tapscott and Ticoll offer invaluable advice on how to lead the new age, rather than simply react to it.

The Naked Corporation is a book for managers, employees, investors, customers, and anyone who cares about the future of the corporation and society. A new age is upon us, and you can either work with it and thrive, or fight it and die.

Text offers a guide to the new age of openness, explaining how the new transparency has caused a power shift toward customers, employees, shareholders, and other stakeholders; how and where the information has exploded; and how corporations across many industries have seized on transparency as an opportunity. DLC: Corporate governance.

Don Tapscott is recognized as one of the leading business thinkers of our time. He authored several of the bestselling books of the last decade, including Paradigm Shift, The Digital Economy, and Growing Up Digital.