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Etiquette, Ethics and Transparency – Two “Good News” Stories!

By Paula, on April 8th, 2009

The world’s culture and technology support a level of transparency that is unprecedented.  This has positive and negative effects, but here are two “good news” ethics and etiquette stories pulled from this week’s headlines:

First, President Barack Obama spoke to a group of university students in Turkey yesterday in an unscripted, town-hall style conversation.  Although I personally disagree with everything this president has done about the economy, I think this was an absolutely brilliant move.  He was invited as an honored guest.  He acted like an honored guest, and he was treated as an honored guest. This is a huge departure in style and substance from visits of previous U.S. Presidents, who spoke from behind plexiglass and podiums and still had shoes thrown at them! If you’ve ever spent any time in a Muslim country, you know that hospitality  is a big deal. The students were respectful but very candid and asked some awkward questions.   Obama was also very respectful and candid and responded in kind.

The bigger deal is this – one of these Turkish students commented afterward that if the President of the United States was not too big and important to come to them and answer their questions,  (which Obama also does on his website and facebook pages) they should expect the same courtesy from their own leaders.  I’m sure many young (and not so young) people in many parts of the world feel the same way. Their generation is growing up to expect this level of transparency. That makes it much more difficult for oligarchs to hang on to power without being answerable to and meeting the needs of their people.

The second story -  ebay published its quarterly earnings reports first on Twitter last week, to provide additional  transparency to shareholders who could not attend their meetings.   According to PRWeek:

Ebay blogger Richard Brewer-Hay wrote that he was worried when he had to approach his legal team for the first time to talk about best practices and couldn’t find other companies who were using these social media tactics for their earnings announcements. But his fears were unfounded.

“I was worried I would be forced to cease this innovative way of reporting company information to our constituents,” Brewer-Hay wrote. “Thankfully that was not the case. Rather, it was mutually agreed that we could take this opportunity to set up a best practices approach to live-blogging and reporting company information via the Web – beyond traditional conference call and press release.”

Shareholders, regulators and others will come to expect this level of transparency and immediacy from corporations – making it that much harder for corporations to conceal things and delay information they don’t want released.

So, two excellent examples of people using these social and technological changes to do some good, for a change!  There are good people out there!

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April 8th, 2009 | Category: business ethics, business etiquette, ethics | 27 comments

27 comments to Etiquette, Ethics and Transparency – Two “Good News” Stories!

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