The DS-9 transparency dynamics: To be or not to be… transparent?

摘要

Changing the transparency of principals, agents or technologies affects power relations with the users of transparency. Drawing on Plato's allegory on the relation between true being and the illusions of the sense world, this essay explores the complexity of such changes in three stages. First, nine Deming Scholars (DS-9) use systems archetypes to interpret some of the G7/G8 summit clarion calls for greater transparency in political and military spheres. Second, the essay presents a framework for shifting managerial attention from single- and double- to multi-loop learning, a potentially significant requirement for combating greed and fee-driven deals when they come into play. Third, using a generic system dynamics simulation model, a hypothetical pro forma example from office real estate development, investment and finance shows how the manipulation of project assumptions (whether attributable to irrational exuberance, faulty data or poor forecasts) can significantly affect real estate investment decisions and cause office space oversupply.