CHALLENGES: RADICAL TRANSPARENCY Non venal edition Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) Developing Ideas from LLORENTE & CUENCA, January, 2019 Lagasca, 88 - 3rd floor 28001 Madrid (Spain) Edition: Punto de Vista Editores puntodevistaeditores.com Design: Joaquín Gallego Content PROLOGUE The sense and limitations of transparency 13 Jose Antonio Zarzalejos CHALLENGES: RADICAL TRANSPARENCY Communication in a transparent world 21 Jose Antonio Llorente PUBLIC AFFAIRS Tabare Vazquez: how not communicating may have been the worst ever decision by a politician 27 Alvaro J. Amoretti Transparency management during election periods 39 Luz Angela Sanchez Transparency and good governance, the keys to democratic decision-making 51 Joan Navarro & Manuela Sanchez LEADERSHIP & CORPORATE POSITIONING Corporate Empathy: a new approach to reputation management 59 Juan Cardona & Jorge Tolsa CONSUMER ENGAGEMENT The new Latin American consumer: a question of trust. A regional analysis of six economic sectors 67 Juan Carlos Gozzer & David Gonzalez Natal CORPORATE COMMUNICATION Communicators' 16 ethical principles 75 Jose Antonio Llorente Transparency, an oportunity to generate long-term trust 81 John Alves It's time for companies to make their voices heard 85 Arturo Pinedo The reputation of family businesses in the face of digital transformation 89 Javier Rosado, Pau Solanilla & Francisco Hevia Compliance and reputation in the good corporate governance era 103 Gonzalo Carranza, Francisco Hevia & Denise Ledgard EXECUTIVE COACHING Seven principles for managing transparency 129 Jose Manuel Velasco DIGITAL & FINANCIAL Radical transparency: how to make the most of technology and boost stakeholder dialogue 145 Ivan Pino & Jorge Lopez Zafra DIGITAL & CRISIS Against fake news in the company: real advocacy 155 Eva Pedrol & Maria Obispo Keys and errors in managing reputation crises in a global society 167 Eva Pedrol & Natalia Sara The new paradigm for crisis and risk communications 177 Ivan Pino & Luis Serrano TALENT ENGAGEMENT The glassdoor revolution: transparency as the key for attracting talent 185 Luis Gonzalez & Jon Perez FINANCIAL The integrated annual report, another step toward transparency in organizations 195 Meritxell Perez & Tomas Conde EPILOGUE Transparency, an ally in the war on corruption 207 Antonio Garrigues Walker LLORENTE & CUENCA About LLORENTE & CUENCA 215 About Developing Ideas 217 Organization 219 PROLOGUE The sense and limitations of transparency Jose Antonio Zarzalejos Journalist, former director ABC and El Correo Good governance is transparent. This seems a sim- ple enough concept to understand… and, indeed, it is. However, implementing through rules or behavior the exact type of transparency that citizens, the media and politicians refer to can be difficult. It proves especially complicated when it comes to defining the limits to transparency regarding the actions of public officials charged with ensuring the right to privacy. An arbitrary "right to know" has come about which goes beyond the proper democratic meaning of citizens’ entitlement to know and scrutinize the behavior and decisions of persons in public positions. Nowadays, transparency is no longer just the prac- tice of good governance; instead, it has evolved and become a significant empty space capable of embrac- ing unlimited entitlement to information on any well- known citizen’s personal life - whatever the reason for 13 CHALLENGES: RADICAL TRANSPARENCY their fame - as an expression of some kind of radical democracy with clear populist overtones. In any system upholding individual freedoms, transparency is a citizen’s right. It provides access to public information for the improvement of gov- ernment, helps hold political posts accountable for their behavior and guarantees fairness as a result of matters being on public record. All in all, transparency can serve to prevent malpractice on the part of ad- ministrations and those in responsible governmental positions. Transparency is a factor of certainty and, for that reason, is tremendously important when it comes to public and private investment decisions, where the economic aspect of transparency is far from negligible. And thus why all serious democracies have enacted laws such as Spain’s 2013 Transparency Act, which lays down the rules on how citizens’ right to know must be exercised. Sometimes transparency is actively imposed (dictated by the government), while other times, trans- parency is passive (required by the taxpayer). On some occasions, transparency is collaborative. In any case, a democracy marked by transparency is enriched and empowers citizens more in their relationships with public bodies. That is the scope of transparency. What one cannot do is go beyond that definition of transparency (as es- tablished by law) and wield it as an argument to justify the invasion of privacy or as the basis for excessive and abusive demands to know individuals’ private, per- sonal and family-related information. Technology has brought down the protective wall guarding privacy, and truly outrageous acts can be perpetrated in the name of transparency by failing to properly differentiate 14 PROLOGUE transparency from unhealthy morbid curiosity or unlawful profiting with stolen data for commercial purposes. When such confusion occurs (transparency used as carte blanche to invade privacy), individual and collective rights, as well as freedoms, suffer. Article 18.1 of the Spanish Constitution recognizes the right to honor personal and family privacy and one’s own image. Furthermore, the Spanish Constitution defends those rights through a judicial process culminating in a judgment, which may find a party guilty of unlawful intrusion into those rights (in Spain, the Organic Law of 1982)1. The meticulous attention to detail of this Act is particularly interesting, especially in the way it defines instances of unlawful intrusion into personal and fa- mily privacy (Article 7), which is so frequently breached not only due to an absence of scruples of certain people and businesses, but also because of the lack of public criteria on how we should live harmoniously in a society. Personal and family privacy are non-negotiable, which is why individual and collective data rights are protected through a law enacted specifically for that purpose, with roots going back to 1999 in Spain. This law intends to guarantee and protect people’s personal data, especially their honor and personal privacy. The Spanish Data Protection Agency is at the service of this law and is authorized to inspect and enforce admin- istrative fines. Additionally, in the event of a serious breach, civil judicial proceedings are available. Legal instruments of this kind are completely necessary be- cause techniques for scrutinizing the lives of citizens 1 Organic Law of May 5th, on the right to civil protection of honor, personal and family privacy and personal reputation. 15 CHALLENGES: RADICAL TRANSPARENCY are now so sophisticated and surreptitious that they can often violate all manner of controls. The European Union has now established directives for this purpose and permanently monitors the issue, as it gains moral, civic and democratic importance and transcendence day after day. It is vital to emphasize that the transparency stem- ming from public life, as in the case of administrations and public sector positions, is restricted in scope; there are boundaries to personal and family privacy that must not be breached. We have every right, for example, to know the assets and income attached to certain public sector posts of a political nature. These are examples of active transparency that supersedes questions of per- sonal privacy in seeking to render the nation's leaders accountable by publishing information on their income and assets. Therefore, it induces public confidence in those positions. Nevertheless, transparency does not per se entitle us to greater or different kinds of intrusion into their private lives or family circles. We need to reflect on the degree of confusion now linked to transparency, privacy and freedom of the press. The last-mentioned is now so prevalent that even Constitutional Court jurisprudence has found (in sev- eral related judgments) the more well-known a person is, the weaker their right to privacy —as well as their right to protect their own personal reputation. This is especially relevant for celebrities who parade their pri- vate life in the media and then, when there is no profit at stake, seek to protect their privacy despite having waived all precautions that would have ensured their privacy remained protected. While these are exceptions to the rule, they do occur frequently. Dossiers, audio 16 PROLOGUE recordings, images and documents that compromise or intrude on their privacy are frequently offered to the media. That content then comes into the public domain under the guise of freedom of expression and of the press. However, to exercise that freedom without a code of ethics and conduct can lead —and most certainly has led— to unconscionable abuses ending the careers of people in the public eye. This debate is especially relevant today in Spain, where the confusion and mystification surrounding transparency and freedom of expression are especially serious, as each belongs to clearly different and distant areas. Thorough efforts must be made to differentiate areas in which public scrutiny remains a democratic right of citizens duly exercised as established by law and those where transparency is used to camouflage