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Transparency in corporate strategy means that all of the information used to develop the strategy is clearly visible and understandable to stakeholders. This includes the uncertainties, decisions, payoffs, and relationships between them. By building transparent models, a corporation can improve its strategy by allowing the strategy to be challenged by the modeler and by other interested parties. Transparency also benefits the corporation by increasing confidence, buy-in, and communication. Transparency does not need to be limited to internal stakeholders. There are benefits to allowing outside parties (e.g., market analysts, government agencies, business partners, shareholders) to have the opportunity to reanalyze and/or extend the model, thereby understanding the critical factors that affect them and their own strategies relating to your corporation. Case histories may be prepared from modeling results, not only for feedback purposes, but also to educate future decision-makers. Unfortunately, even responsible public companies are currently adapting decision-making policies on faith, i.e. lacking transparency, because they seemingly have no choice. Mental models and other common methods used in business are effectively opaque. Without appropriate tools, decision-makers cannot thoroughly and rigorously explainhow their information led to their choices. Moreover, most existing software tools and techniques are over-simplified and vague. Others are often highly inflexible approaches commonly referred to as “black boxes” due to their hidden assumptions. To the extent that current tools are transparent, the transparency generally illustrates the use of coarse approximations and/or failure to include relevant information. Employees could use these methods or tools to be deliberately opaque when their personal goals are not aligned with corporate goals.
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