Driven by the bursting of the Internet bubble and the scandals of 2002, the era of opacity in business has come to an end. Thanks to the Internet — whistleblowers, aggressive news media, customers, trading partners, shareholders, and community activists are gaining unprecedented access to information regarding corporate behavior, operations, and performance.

This information ranges from financial data, employee grievances, and internal memos, to environmental problems, product weaknesses, international protests, scandals, and policies. Corporations are essentially becoming “naked.”

In every industry, companies are facing increasing scrutiny. People can use the Internet to find out anything you don’t want them to know, from the working conditions in your suppliers’ factories to the latest ratings of your products and services. And they can also go on-line to spread the word to the rest of the world, with dire consequences for your company’s reputation, profits, and stock price.

Twenty-first century businesses can’t cover up their mistakes, secrets, or crimes. The only way to survive is by doing everything by the book and letting everyone see that you have nothing to hide.

The Naked Corporation, which is probably the best of several books on the subject, explains how and why transparency has moved to center stage. The authors, Don Tapscott and David Ticoll, argue that transparency and trust are now becoming critical to the operation of organizations and economies for five reasons:

The success of market economies and globalization. As market capitalism moves to a global scale, the competitive success of firms and nations depends on genuine performance; the crises of 1998 in East Asia and 2002 in the United States exposed the consequences of cronyism, corruption, and false reporting in both the private and public sectors. Economic growth depends on trust. In the World Values Survey, people in 37 “market economies,” both rich and poor, were asked whether they believed that “most people can be trusted” or “you can’t be too careful in dealing with people.” The proportion of respondents who said most people can be trusted varied from 5.5 percent in Peru to 61.2 percent in Norway. Researchers found a direct correlation between trust and national economic growth. In...