 PLENARY DEBATE Transparency, Trust and Truth SATURDAY 13 OCTOBER 2007
Women bring truth and transparency to the leadership positions they hold because of their innate ability to admit to their mistakes, a debate on the role of trust in the workplace heard. Deanna Oppenheimer, the boss of Barclays Bank UK, told participants: “Women have the ability to say ‘I was wrong, and here’s what we are going to do about it’. And this ability to acknowledge error is important because it brings credibility to an organization.” Oppenheimer said that before becoming CEO of Barclays, she had worked for a bank in the U.S. that was built on the premise of ‘Say what you will do and do what you say’. But she warned that the world of finance was so competitive that banks could not release all their secrets. Research had shown that customers did not want every scrap of detail; they simply wanted to be sure that the products offered by banks and the information provided on those products was honest. Samuel DiPiazza opened the discussion by saying that business was based on trust, which entailed disclosure of information to investors and the general public about a wide range of aspects of an operation, including product quality and suppliers. All stakeholders based their trust on what they knew, so business must give an honest presentation of itself, he said. In addition, he added, information today travelled at an incredible speed and reputations could be destroyed in seconds. That was why transparency was a top priority for chief executive officers around the world. When serious breaches of trust occurred, especially when they were caused by lack of transparency, governments often passed new laws and regulations, he said. These often did not give a perfect answer to the crisis at hand, he admitted, but business probably deserved what it got. He also emphasised that the media had to act responsibly in its handling of information. He considered, for example, that it had performed badly during the recent problems in the international credit markets. DiPiazza’s judgement was that transparency had increased significantly since the 1990s, when the concept was scarcely recognised. Hu Shuli pointed out that transparency was a sensitive issue in China, and ever since her magazine had broken the silence on an insider trading scandal in its first cover story in 1998 it had worked hard to buttress the public’s right to know. As a result, errant business people now had to think about getting caught by the media as well as by government and police. DiPiazza described the development of a robust media in China as one of the most important developments in the history of the country. In Lebanon, said journalist May Chidiac, TV channel licences were allocated on political and religious lines. Channels were opinionated and seemed to be feeding audiences with what they expected to hear. But this phenomenon occurred in the U.S. too, she said, citing Fox. Carlos Ghosn noted that it was confusing to use the words transparency, trust and truth in the singular, because there were many transparencies. “You might trust someone with your money but not your kids, or trust them with your kids but not your money”, he quipped. Ghosn said any discussion on transparency needed a clear understanding of the exact meaning of the word in different cultures. When he went to work with Nissan in Japan in 1999, within the company the term transparency was generally linked to vulnerability. “It took a lot of time to establish transparency as an important part of management”, he said. On the negative side of transparency, he feared that the pressure of openness and the sensationalism on the part of some media might deter talented people from promoting original ideas and going against the tide. In response to Oppenheimer’s point about admitting mistakes, Rama Yade said that as a young politician she would be able to do so, but it wasn’t an easy thing to do. It was simpler to recognise errors in Britain and the U.S. than in France, she argued, because the French regarded political power with particular respect. In addition, France was an old country that thought it had a specific role to play in the world. She doubted that public opinion in France was ready to face the truths the new government was telling it: that it was time to deal with long-standing problems, that the French needed a new vision of themselves and that reforms were necessary. _________________________________ |
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