Brad Rawlins of Bringham Young University, published a study with the intent of creating an instrument to gauge stakeholder perception of transparency. He surveyed employees of a health care organization to see what they thought made an organization trustworthy.

His findings relate to what I have been posting about these past weeks. Transparent organizations should have integrity, respect, and open communication. He also found that organizations could do this in several ways. I will relate a few of them with new social media.

• High participation: Web 2.0 is a wonderful tool when it comes to communication. Whether it’s communicating to your consumers on a social network like Twitter (see the Ford post) or letting employees communicate via podcasts (see the Microsoft post). Participation in dialog with stakeholders shows that you care and that can do wonders for your corporate reputation.
• Substantial information: Are you white-washing the facts, or are you being open? You must provide your stakeholders with the facts they need to know. If you think it is something relevant to them, you can bring it up on your blog (like CEO Paul Levy did about his salary). It also needs to be in clear language that they will be able to understand.
• Accountability: Are you accountable to your stakeholders? By starting a conversation with them online you are. Let their comments go unregulated (within reason) and listen to what they have to say about you. Also of importance is actually following through with results when things do go wrong.

I learned over the course of writing this blog, that transparency and authenticity are crucial elements for any organization. When it comes down to reputation and credibility (as it always will) there is no excuse to not be open and honest. The rules are changing now that more companies are using Web 2.0. There have been some great uses of these new tools and some poor ones. The only way to be successful is to keep trying  and also remember to be truthful while you do it. The truth will always come out, why don’t you use it to your advantage?