What is Transparency? Richard W. Oliver

Transparency.

What is transparency? It sounds like a simple question, but it has an extensive variety of answers.  Those answers are colored by content, context, occupation, income, demographic group, and emotional involvement, among other factors. Transparency has three main elements: an observer, something available to be observed, and a means or method for the observation.

Transparency is defined, as letting the truth be available for other to see if they so choose, or perhaps think to look, or have the time, means, and skills to look. That’s the definition stated by the author after his research.
Transparency involves a wide selection of events, organizations, and issues of growing importance of life. In this book, the author argues that transparency is an essential ingredient of success today in our social, religious and cultural lives and also in politics, professions and business.

In this book many different aspects are mentioned regarding transparency in our daily life. Among these aspects the author mentions the government transparency, commercial transparency, transparency in the professions, transparency in nonprofit organizations, transparency in religious institutions, transparency in investments and opacity, which is the lack of transparency.

This book is basically a primer on the now-a-very important business concepts of today’s world. From a cloudy idea, transparency has become one of the fundamental goals of corporate world and government with implications for every body in the society. The author provides with his book, a comprehensive view of the elements of transparency. Not only talking about the transparency imperative, but also about the good use of transparency, or best practice, and it mentions how to use several resources to put transparency in action.

Oliver, Richard W. (2004) What is Transparency?. New York, N.Y. The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.