Transparency work and argumentation design in deliberation about business in society
by Mark Aakhus
Aakhus, M. (2010). Transparency work and argumentation design in deliberation about business in society. In D. Gouran (Ed.), The functions of argument and social context: Selected papers from the 16th Biennial Conference on Argumentation (pp. 11-17). Washington, DC: National Communication Association.
There is considerable contemporary interest in the prospect that corporate responsibility can be fostered through... more
There is considerable contemporary interest in the prospect that corporate responsibility can be fostered through practices that make business conduct transparent. The belief is that transparency leads to accountability and that accountability will bring about socially and environmentally desirable business-conduct. Underlying this belief is the assumption about the power of publicity as articulated by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in the early 20th century: Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman. In terms of the emerging field of work in corporate social responsibility (CSR), much attention is given to developing practices for transparency that enable businesses to demonstate their corporate responsibility to their constituencies (e.g., sustainability reports, codes of conduct). Such transparency practice shifts who shines the light and what the light shines on, thus changing the ground and shaping the materials for deliberating about the role and conduct of business in society.
Rather than focusing directly on the transparency practices of business organizations, attention is given here to transparency practices of third-party actors whose work shapes the landscape of accountability. Traditionally this function has been carried out by the business press, investigative journalism, government regulatory agencies, and courts. Over the past several decades, however, shifts in the conduct of business, changes in transnational governance, innovations in communication and information technology, and social trends appear to have changed the ways and means for raising doubts, pursuing opposition, and otherwise making sense of business conduct in society.
Download (.pdf) Hetherington, Kregg. 2012. "Promising information: democracy, development, and the remapping of Latin America." Economy and Society 41(2): 127-150.
‘Information' is an enormously promising, if ambiguous term in post-Cold War development thinking. In the last three... more ‘Information' is an enormously promising, if ambiguous term in post-Cold War development thinking. In the last three decades, international development agencies have argued that Latin American land reform policy should focus not on redistributing land but on creating more information about land and making it as widely accessible as possible. These proposals, which I call ‘cadastral fixes' to rural underdevelopment, are understandably attractive and seem to fit well with democratic values of transparency and openness. But I argue that the use of the word ‘information' to connote both democratic rights and the apparatuses devised by economists to improve the rural economy is misleading. ‘Information' is productively vague, allowing development experts to change their projects in the face of failure without questioning the fundamental economic premises on which their reforms are built. As I show in this case study of Paraguayan cadastral reform, the history of these refinements shows a shift, under the rubric of open information, towards increasingly disciplinary forms of intervention in the politics of land.
The Millenium Mainframe Market Forecast
Elms, Teresa. 1996. Mainframe millenium market forecast. Computer Economics Report, June 1996, 1-5.
Replacing mainframe applications: A growing trend.
1990. In Teresa Elms (ed.), The AS/400 Alternative: A System/370 to AS/400 Migration Sourcebook. Cheshire, CT: ADM Inc.
Market research data and technology trend analysis concerning high-cost mainframe application software replacement. Market research data and technology trend analysis concerning high-cost mainframe application software replacement.