Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to critically review the relevant literature on transparency, provide a comprehensive definition of transparency, and present a new framework for facilitating the adoption of transparency as an ethical cornerstone and pragmatic strategy for organizational responsible business management.
Design/methodology/approach
– A systematic literature review – a methodology adopted from medical sciences to eliminate research bias – was conducted. In doing so, the definitions, antecedents, and consequences of transparency are accessed and synthesized.
Findings
– Based upon this process transparency is defined as the extent to which a stakeholder perceives an organization provides learning opportunities about itself. A conceptual framework emerged from the data. It describes when transparency is especially important, what organizations can do to be more transparent, and the potential benefits of transparency.
Practical implications
– The transparency framework can be used as a guide for organizations attempting to change their behavior, image, and performance by adopting transparency as a value in their organization. In addition, the framework can be used to create and adopt a universal (i.e. industry-wide or even societal-wide) code of conduct. Furthermore, this review, definition, and framework provide a template for academics to advance transparency theory, and empirically test the construct’s application.
Originality/value
– As a new research field, transparency has lacked a concise definition as well as a conceptual framework. This is the first comprehensive summary of transparency. In addition, this study contributes to the methodology of evaluating construct definitions to advance empirical research.
