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andBeyond - Link to Story Tuesday, May 02, 2006 Do transparency and stock performance correlate? L.J. Rittenhouse, President of andBEYOND Communications, certainly thinks so. The company's recent survey shows that companies who excel at transparency also excel on the market. "The passage of Sarbanes-Oxley legislation in 2002 was intended to promote clear and transparent disclosure, but only 24 percent of the companies in our 2005 survey were awarded top marks in candor down from 57 percent in the 2002 survey. While many executives are certifying their results to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley, they are also publishing virtually unintelligible shareholder letters. If they cannot candidly articulate their goals and results, then how can they credibly walk their talk?" The 10 Top-Ranked Companies in the 2005 Rittenhouse Candor Rankings(SM) The flip side of Wikipedia The Toronto Star - Link to Story Monday, May 01, 2006 For all the accolades received by Wikipedia there still remains one inherent issue that could to undermine the concept's fate. As highlighted by Shannon McCaffrey of the Associated Press, the open editing process allows any and all Internet users to edit entries at will - and while there is are administrators and general users who track changes - the overwhelming volume of entries make it difficult to sort through politically motivated changes. "Political operatives are covertly rewriting — or defacing — candidates' biographical entries to make the boss look good or an opponent look ridiculous. As a result, political campaigns are monitoring the Web site more closely than ever this U.S. election year. Revisions made by Capitol Hill staffers became so frequent and disruptive earlier this year that Wikipedia temporarily blocked access to the site from some congressional Internet addresses. The pranks included bumping up the age of the Senate's oldest member, West... read more International Herald Tribune - Link to Story Wednesday, April 19, 2006 Elizabeth Economy, director of Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and Michael Levi, senior fellow for science and technology at the council, weigh in with a great article about the role of American companies, and the American government, in China's crackdown on openness and Internet freedom. Of note is their belief that investors need to evaluate companies listed on domestic stock exchanges on how they manage transparency and privacy issues. "A string of events has forced China's information technology policy onto the U.S. agenda. Yahoo's assistance when Beijing arrested a democracy advocate, Microsoft's closure of free- wheeling Chinese Web sites, and Google's accession to Chinese censorship demands have brought into stark relief the difference in political values between the two countries in a way not seen since Tiananmen Square... But the most effective way for America to support those in China who are advocating reform is not to block U.S. technology companies... read more Line56 - Link to Story Friday, April 14, 2006 While the corporate world continues to discuss the value of the corporate blog, Line56 weighs in with an archived piece on the real value of blogging for organizations. "The whole point of a blog is that it is a multi-way dialogue between the author(s) and readers, and readers and other readers. If you lose that spirit, the blog turns into a kind of press release." Who's got a good blog you ask? According to Line56, Randy Baseler, VP of marketing for Boeing, has one of the best - while GM Vice Chairman Robert Lutz's doesn't quite meet the standards of engagement. "In corporate blogs, the value of information is closely connected with interaction. Giving readers this kind of information creates an impression of trust and transparency; it doesn't matter that the information is ultimately being presented for the sake of marketing, it makes readers feel as if the company is sharing something with them, and it helps to build a community. This really kicks in at the... read more WebProNews - Link to Story Wednesday, April 05, 2006 In this, the age of transparency, it seems people still can't agree as to how much is too much transparency. Case in point: the corporate blog. While some sing its praises as a tool to engage with your stakeholders, others (like Nicholas Carr) seem to believe that there's simply too much risk in having one. Whether you go forward with a corporate blog, according to Jason Lee Miller of WebProNews, will be determined by two hard questions: 1. Do we build trust and business through transparency? 2. Do we maintain a professional and always in control (albeit mechanical) reputation? Getting socked by SOXMSNBC - Link to Story Wednesday, April 05, 2006 Amid heightened regulations in the post-Enron/Worldcom business environment, corporations continue to feel the squeeze from Sarbanes-Oxley. Since its inception in 2004, SOX has brought dramatic increases in auditing costs to publicly traded companies across the US. These costs have been compounded by a shortage of qualified accountants. Craig M. Douglas of the Boston Business Journal reports, "The pain was supposed to subside for companies after the first year of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, as business pundits predicted that investments in pricey technologies and accounting infrastructure would peter out after taking a big, one-time bite out of Corporate America's bottom line. The pundits were wrong. A Boston Business Journal analysis of 27 public companies in Massachusetts shows their auditing costs spiked 26 percent last year, bringing their total increase to 103 percent since SOX became effective in 2004. In total, the group spent $56.6 million on SOX and related auditing... read more Newsweek - Link to Story Tuesday, February 28, 2006 This week's edition of Newsweek carries a great story on the explosion of blogging in China and the role that foreign companies such as Yahoo! and Google play in the censorship of sensitive topics. With over 30 million registered bloggers, up from just half that the year before, the Chinese government has declared politics, foreign policy, military and economics off-limit for bloggers.... These restraints notwithstanding, many diehard bloggers are using the technology to bring much needed transparency to issues of public concern. "And unlike newspapers, which can be easily shut down, controversial bloggers can spring out of nowhere depending on events. After police in the southern prov-ince of Guangdong fired on rural protesters last year, blogger and dissident Wang Yi brought national attention to the shooting by posting an open letter demanding an official inquiry. Although Bokee deleted the letter, it later allowed limited discussion of the incident—which informed... read more The Economist - Link to Story Thursday, February 16, 2006 InThe Naked Corporation by Tapscott and Ticoll (2003), they state quite clearly that companies that fail to engage and listen to their stakeholders will struggle to survive. Innovative Internet tools such as blogs and online discussion forums have given stakeholders - be it a company's employees, shareholders, customers, business partners, or host community - a great deal of power with which they can leverage change. The Economist recently picked up on the power of the blog, noting that while they indeed pose a threat, they also provide companies with key insights into critiques and complaints that can help them avert disaster. "They have always had their critics, but corporations are having an especially hard time making friends of late. Scandals at Enron and WorldCom destroyed thousands of employees' livelihoods, raised hackles about bosses' pay and cast doubt on the reliability of companies' accounts; labour groups and environmental activists are finding new... read more WebCPA - Link to Story Wednesday, February 15, 2006 Independent risk research firm RateFinancials Inc. has come out with a new study that links poor governance with poor financial performance. The study looked at more than 50 publicly-traded companies whose financial statements rank poorly "in terms of the quality and transparency of earnings disclosures and corporate governance." "We continue to establish a strong correlation between poor stock performance and companies with questionable earnings quality," said founder and president Victor Germack, in a statement. "Investors who choose to ignore these warning signs have a high probability of sustaining losses." Germack also noted that an estimated 1,200 companies restated their earnings last year, nearly double the level of 2004. Future Digital LifeCNN Money - Link to Story Monday, February 06, 2006 David Kirkpatrick, Senior Editor at Fortune, takes a look at a recent conference held in Munich, Germany. Hosted by Hubert Burda Media,Digital Lifestyle Day brought together some of the worlds best thinkers to tackle the question of where digital technology is headed. "CEO Burda is resolutely optimistic. He likens Digital Lifestyle Day (DLD) to a "Fourteenth-century fair" where traders arrived from all over with exciting new goods. "'What can we do with silk?' 'What can we do with paper?' They had not the slightest idea what to do with paper before the Gutenberg invention," says Burda. So now he is gathering "the most cutting-edge, freshest, newest things people are bringing from abroad or that we have developed." What can we do with video blogging? I conducted a panel at DLD on the wide-open topic of "What's Next?" It included Google (Research) search chief Marissa Mayer, tech pundit Esther Dyson, and Argentinian telecom entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky. One... read more |
