MANY EXECUTIVES VIEW Corporate Responsibility as doing good works. The new model of responsibility is driven by economics. In the age of transparency, firms need to be “responsible” to survive and thrive. Transparency is far more than the obligation to disclose information. People and institutions that interact with firms are gaining unprecedented access to information about corporate behavior, operations, and performance. Armed with new tools to find information about matters that affect their interests, stakeholders scrutinize firms like never before, informing others and organizing collective responses. The corporation is becoming naked.

When you’re naked fitness is no longer an option. So companies everywhere are getting buff. They must have the best products, services and relationships or the lowest costs. More important they need integrity – the foundation of trust in a transparent world. Trust is the expectation that companies will be honest, accountable, considerate and transparent.

Honesty

Honesty is not just an ethical issue; it has become an economic one. To establish trusting relationships, firms need to be open, fairly disclosing information. They must be truthful, accurate and complete in communications. They must not mislead or even be perceived to mislead. In everything from motivating employees, negotiating with partners, publishing product information, disclosing financial information or explaining the environmental impacts of a new factory, companies are expected to tell the truth.

In the networked world we have unprecedented access to information and the ability to verify, authenticate, and evaluate what companies say. Today, legions of skeptical analysts, bold regulators, empowered interest groups, doubting bloggers, and hardened journalists scrutinize any important corporate statement or assertion.

Accountability

To establish trust firms must make clear commitments to distinct stakeholders and abide by them. And they must demonstrate with clear communication, preferably with the verification stamp of independent outside experts, that they have met their commitments.

In the past, accountability was often an undesirable state of affairs invoking liabilities, testing and scrutiny. Better to keep your head low, stay under the radar, and avoid making promises. In the transparent world, where every stakeholder has radar, accountability becomes a requirement for trust. In fact, for those who embrace it as a value, it is a powerful force for business success.

Consideration of others’interests

Acritical pillar of trust is the expectation that a company has consideration for the interests, desires, or feelings of others. Firms increase employee loyalty when employees have the expectation that their company will be loyal to them – that they will not be discarded once the going gets a bit rough, or at least that the company will truly consider their interests and downsize only as a last resort, and then only with a fair and equitable severance.

Despite the availability of price cutting Internet marketplaces, many firms choose to stick with existing suppliers to protect their viability and the integrity of the supply chain. In doing so they build trusting relationships and effective networked businesses. In countless cases companies do the right thing for customers though it hurts short-term earnings.

Transparency

In a transparent world the values that underpin norms become ever more important. The business world is much more complex than even a generation ago. Transactions have grown exponentially. Communication has exploded and fragmented, as dozens of emails replace a meeting or enable previously impossible collaboration on a global basis.

We communicate with a broader range of individuals. Markets are global, bringing a clash of local cultures to the table. Firms assemble and disassemble ad hoc partnerships overnight, where elaborate contracts are unfeasible. In this environment, it is not possible to anticipate the permutations and combinations of choices people need to make through formal rules alone. Rather, the most effective organizations and partnerships are those based on commonly shared values. Trust drops transaction, interaction and partnering costs. Autonomous individuals and groups are able to conduct business on a platform of shared values.

Transparency is requiring firms to behave in a reciprocal, rather than authoritarian manner. Procter & Gamble senior management may hand down a game plan to its employees. Alternatively, it may engage employees in a collaborative process to determine work plans and commitments. In doing so it creates reciprocal obligations.

Modern management theory is rich with evidence that the latter approach works best in terms of employee motivation, comprehension of work plans, development and the quality of work products.

Trusting relationships engender reciprocal obligations. This can occur in a specific situation – say the sale of an item on eBay. The trust each party has for the other is enhanced through the transaction. Or, every positive performance review an employee receives contributes to the sense of reciprocal obligation to perform a job well for the company. Reciprocity can also take time to develop, where there may be a relationship that at any given time may be unrequited, but over time is repaid and balanced. Again, this contributes to the development of long-term obligations between people.

The new integrity as we define it – honesty, consideration of stakeholders’interests, accountability, and transparency – is more than just a matter of values. Increasingly, the new integrity is becoming a foundation of competitive strategy – indeed, of competitive advantage.

Don Tapscott is Adjunct Professor of Strategic Management, Rotman School. He is the coauthor (with David Ticoll) of “The Naked Corporation: How the Age of Transparency Will Revolutionize Business” (Viking, 2003). It can be purchased at www.rotman.utoronto. ca/books

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Giller Prize Winner Richard Wright among list of those to be honoured

Thursday, January 12, 2006

On behalf of Senate, the President of Trent University announced the outstanding individuals who will receive honorary degrees at convocation ceremonies on June 1 and 2, 2006.

"Again, our Committee on University Honours has been very successful in identifying a group of accomplished Canadians," said President Bonnie Patterson. "The collective achievements of all of the degree recipients represents the very best of volunteer leadership, Canadian literature, leadership in the Aboriginal community, and critical inquiry into how technology shapes our lives."

The following individuals will be presented with an honorary degree at this year's ceremonies:

June 1, 2006 Morning Ceremony:

Charles Coffey, O.C.

Mr. Charlie Coffey is the Executive Vice President, Government Affairs & Business Development, for RBC Financial Group. Prior to his current appointment, he led business banking in Canada for five years and headed three regional headquarters: Manitoba, Metro Toronto and Ontario. A native of Woodstock, New Brunswick and graduate of the Tuck Executive Program at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, Mr. Coffey has made community leadership a priority throughout his career, serving as a strong advocate for children, aboriginal peoples and entrepreneurs. He is chair, Council for Early Child Development (Ontario); chair, national advisory council, The Canadian Museum for Human Rights; and co-chair, Champions, Aboriginal Human Resource Development Council of Canada. Mr. Coffey is also past co-chair of both the Commission on Early Learning and Child Care for the City of Toronto and Trent University's Friends of Native Studies Council. His directorships include the Arctic Children and Youth Foundation, The Canadian Council of Christians and Jews, Sustainable Development Technology Canada and the Canadian Journalism Foundation. In 1997, Mr. Coffey was named an Honorary Chief by the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs for his support of First Nations and their goals of economic development and self-sufficiency. In 2004, Charlie Coffey was appointed an Officer to the Order of Canada.

June 1, 2006 Afternoon Ceremony:

Richard Wright

Mr. Richard Wright is a Trent alum having graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1970. He is the winner of three of Canada's most distinguished prizes for literature, the Trillium Book Award, the Giller Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award, for his novel Clara Callan. Previous winners of the Giller include Mordecai Richler, Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro. Mr. Wright has written 10 novels, the most recent of which is "Adultery." While at Trent, Mr. Wright published his first novel "The Weekend Man" which received high acclaim. In 1995, his novel "The Age of Longing" was nominated for both the Giller and Governor General's award. Before coming to Trent as a mature student, Mr. Wright was a journalist, radio copywriter and worked in publishing. After graduation he became an English teacher at Ridley College where he taught for 20 years.

June 2, 2006 Morning Ceremony:

Roberta Jamieson

Mrs. Roberta Jamieson was the first Canadian Aboriginal woman to earn a law degree and was the first woman appointed as Ontario's Ombudsman, a position she held for a decade. Mrs. Jamieson currently serves as Chief Executive Officer of the National Aboriginal Foundation and is the first female Chief of the Six Nations Band in Ontario. Raised on Six Nations of the Grand River, Canada's most populous reserve, she learned to be an effective conciliator and negotiator within her large family – a skill that has defined her career. Lauded for developing and promoting non-adversarial methods of conflict resolution, Jamieson has collaborated with legal and political experts in Asia, Africa, Europe and North America to advance democracy through institutional change. She has won international acclaim for her passion, willingness to take risks, and commitment to the field of conflict resolution. Mrs. Jamieson was appointed to the Order of Canada in 1994.

June 2, 2006 Afternoon Ceremony:

Donald Tapscott

Mr. Don Tapscott is recognized as one of the leading business thinkers of our time. A Trent alum (Psychology 1966), Mr. Tapscott majored in statistics and is one of four brothers who attended Trent University. An internationally renowned authority, consultant and speaker on business strategy and organizational transformation, his clients include top executives of many of the world's largest corporations and government leaders from many countries. Mr. Tapscott has authored or co-authored ten widely-read books on the application of technology in business. His latest book, co-authored with David Ticoll, is THE NAKED CORPORATION: How the Age of Transparency Will Revolutionize Business. Mr. Tapscott is President of New Paradigm Learning Corporation and is an Adjunct Professor of Management at the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. He is recipient of the of the 1996 Communications Week Visionary Award and the Business Leadership Award from the Canadian Information Processing Society 1996.

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For more information contact:

Don Cumming, Senior Director, Public Affairs, (705) 748-1011, ext. 1224