Too much information?

Like many beautiful ideas, transparency is a little more complicated when it’s translated into reality. In an age when it’s normal for detailed information to be readily available to anyone who cares to look – through online customer reviews, public social media profiles, location-enabled apps – it’s easy to assume that sharing information can only be a good thing.

In organisations, transparency has seemingly obvious benefits: frontline employees with access to information will be empowered to make decisions quickly and more effectively, and they’ll be more engaged as a result.

Or will they? Our research suggests that very high levels of information-sharing may actually have the opposite effect. While it’s true that a few business leaders have successfully taken transparency to the extreme, many more have attempted to introduce it and then been shocked when their efforts have backfired.