4.4.2 The extent of transparency concerning the content and outcome of decisions

The Survey data revealed (Table 4.3) that the examined social enterprises are transparent regarding their decisions with the key stakeholder groups, such as employees, co-creators -strategic alliance partners, shareholders and customers. However, they are not transparent at all with the adversary categories of opposing interest groups and competitors. That was also confirmed by digressions provided in the open responses. Chart 4.2 shows the level of transparency per stakeholder group.

Transparency is important for the examined social enterprises and it materialises in various types and under certain limitations (Table 4.5). The examined Dutch social enterprises claim that they ‘are cautious’, ‘transparent’ and ‘open’ with ‘no secrets’ towards stakeholders, they feel ‘responsible’ and they ‘share’ feedback ‘honestly’ with them. Transparency will not be offered with regard to commercially sensitive information, e.g. concerning elements of the business model that might be interesting for competitors. A concerned respondent mentioned ‘We are very easy to copy so we cannot be very transparent in view of the risk of competition that can easily grow as information is transparent’ or the transparency is limited ‘to the extent of which the stakeholder is involved’ or ‘to those stakeholder groups that the social enterprise regards as important’. The perceived level of honesty and transparency is achieved through various means amongst others, i.e. blog posts, publicity, through website, publicity in writing through reports or email communication, open communication, after request or via immediate feedback schemes, social media, customer surveys, market analysis for customers and newsletters (Table 4.5).