[NIFL-4EFF:1876] more on transparency

From: Patte Bowman (Patte_Bowman@umit.maine.edu)
Date: Thu Oct 25 2001 - 09:05:27 EDT


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From: "Patte Bowman" <Patte_Bowman@umit.maine.edu>
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Subject: [NIFL-4EFF:1876] more on transparency
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If you can stand one more comment on the transparency discussion....

I just happen to be reading the discussion this week. I also began reading a book, Evolve: Succeeding in the Digital Culture of Tomorrow by Rosabeth Moss Kantor (Harvard Business School Press, 2001.) What caught my eye is that Kantor also talked
about transparency in relation to what she calls "e-culture." She writes, "Businesses, schools, and other established organizations must stop treating people like mushrooms. 'Mushroom management' is the philosophy that it is best to keep employees
in the dark, cover them with manure, and when they ripen, can them. It was tempting to operate that way in big bureaucracies because hoarding information was one way managers expressed their power -- 'I know something you don't know.'

"Bigger, more complex audiences for every action make organizational behavior more transparent, however. It's harder to hide problems or hope that customers, employees, or bosses won't notice transgressions."

She later writes..."Transparency is the new rule. More data are disclosed about more things in more places to more people faster." (page 28)

Full disclosure about what is being learned, what is being taught, how we're going to learn it & teach it, and how we're going to assess what we've learned & taught is how I interpret transparency.

Patte Bowman
Staff Development Specialist
Center for Adult Learning & Literacy
5766 Shibles Hall
University of Maine
Orono, ME 04469-5766
207-581-2498 ext. 15
207-487-4769 home
patte.bowman@umit.maine.edu



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