You may ask how ‘transparency’ is relevant to sustainability. Miriam Webster defines transparency as “free from pretence or deceit; easily detected or seen; readily understood, and characterized by visibility or accessibility of information.
Transparency is considered to be key for business success, and it is often part of corporate values. Yet practicing it remains a challenge! It is very difficult to practice transparency in real life, as companies have to balance the importance of disclosing information, with the need to keep certain information ‘confidential’! Being transparent may contradict confidentiality, but there is a thin line of difference between them. In order to better understand transparency and how it differs from confidentiality you need to first understand how the two they are related. Organization practice transparency to reflect good management and ethical behaviour in handling operations, and they strive to disclose information to their people, community and stakeholders. The idea is to project efficiency, good governance, stakeholder engagement, and anti-corruption.
Confidentiality is viewed as a critical need, and reflects the commitment of the organization to refrain from disclosing information to unofficial bodies that may be destructive towards the organisation. It may be argued that some people tend to label many things as confidential in order to avoid being transparent, and this exclusion in thinking and individualistic behaviour demonstrates failure in terms of sustainable thinking.
The teachings of sustainability advocate transparency to promote an organisation’s corporate responsibility and the disclosure of financial as well as social and environmental performance signals.
In the corporate world organisations are obliged to be transparent in order to be viewed as responsible, specifically because transparency is viewed as the main promoter of sustainability in performance. As such with all ideals transparency exercised without limitation and control may lead to complete disorder within an organization; that’s when the line between them ruptures and confidentiality is broken.
Written by: Rania ElAmin
