The Naked Corporation: How the Age of Transparency Will Revolutionize Business.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: BookShelf - Book Review

The Naked Corporation: How the Age of Transparency Will Revolutionize Business. By Don Tapscott and David Ticoll. Free Press, 349 pages. $28.

Newspaper headlines. Internet sites. Cable television bulletins and instant analysis. Let's face it, in this era of real-time, worldwide communications, there isn't much place to hide, especially when a company may indeed have something it doesn't want to disclose.

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In The Naked Corporation, Don Tapscott and David Ticoll, authors of Digital Capital (2000), review the societal and cultural changes that brought us to this station, and discuss their far-reaching ramifications. In detailing the consequences and the ensuing debate, they use telling examples from dozens of companies in a wide variety of industries; not surprisingly, names like Enron and Arthur Andersen surface as billboards for what not to do.

The book is divided into three basic parts: establishing the emergence of transparency and emphasizing its importance; exploring the various stakeholders--customers, employees, investors, business partners--and their interplay with a company; and a conclusion stressing the importance of "being open."

"In the networked economy, transparency cuts to the center of vast, newly controversial and urgent topics like leadership, trust and sustainability," they write. Customers, employees and institutional investors are being empowered as never before, and "to collaborate effectively, companies and their business partners have no choice but to share intimate knowledge with one another."

Obviously, that isn't easy, and it may be actively resisted. The result, the authors say, can result in a "forced transparency"--such as a trade union...