I have written this work in the framework of my assignment entitled “How organisations experience blogs” from University. I know that there is no direct connection between Organisational Transparency and experiencing blogs, but eventually it is always possible to reveal a connection. So instead of writing about blogs directly, I just started to read about Organisational Transparency. On the next day, when I was searching for a book, I found “The Naked Corporation”, great book of Don Tapscott and David Ticoll. Without thinking much, I bought it from Amazon for 4£.

The Naked Corporation (www.nakedcorporation.com)
Outstanding book. I really enjoy reading it and I advice anybody who plans to become a manager or held a similar position in future to have it. Here is a quotation from the book that I found highly fascinating:

“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.”

The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual (www.cluetrain.com)

Another extraordinary book which I have used is ClueTrain Manifesto. It made a very deep influence on me as well when I first bought it in my country. The interesting thing was that I got this kind of a revolutionary book just in a small coffee shop in down town.

This is а new look at organizational internal and external relations which are based on a new perception of information flow. It is quite easy… The idea of organizational transparency as a whole can be summarized in one sentence: “If you want to be, be yourself”. Anyway I wrote the work and here is the abstract which I would like to present here.

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to show how private blogging have the potential of influencing on transparency of organisations and changing the information flow within internal and external society. Due to grate number of organisations that maintain high level of control of private blogs inside the organisation, this paper proposes to establish a logical link between organisational transparency and blogs to reveal the forecast for five year from this very moment, that all future organisations will implement and liberalise employees private blogging and even pay overtime to any employee who will be ready to keep a private blog about products or services of that particular organisation.
Both organisation and employee have their benefits as well as problems from private blogging. Besides the employee, the employer mainly has very strike concerns about establishing good relationship with society (the target audience) as well as public relations with potential customers or citizens in case of public organisations. Private Blogging allows organisations to present an alternative to official information flow affecting on internal society. Main benefit of employee is that the organisation will take more care about him (her) and his (her) opinion. Any worker will have more chances to be fully self expressed and have his share of influence on organisation and society dealing with that organisation. This type of communication and information flow within and out of organisation will allow sharing not only responsibilities but also influence within internal society of any organisation. Each member of organisation will gain unlimited influence on internal and external societies by means of offering his (her) self view point on any problem or decisions made by organisation. (McIvor, 2002)
This paper examines internal and external communication in three different organisations and researches mainly white papers written by bloggers or other researchers. Particularly it focuses on using blogs as official and unofficial information flow for different types of organisations in perspective of liberating blogging.
Organisational Transparency In The New Era of Blogging - Download (pdf)