Hi all,
As a daft question, why doesn’t affcom say to the affiliates something like "we won’t publish this, but if you want to, then please go ahead and do so yourself”? That way, it’s up to the affiliate to work out what works best in their culture/country/community and to go with that, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.
Thanks, Mike
On 19 Sep 2018, at 18:27, effe iets anders effeietsanders@gmail.com wrote:
As always, it is complicated. While there are benefits to extreme transparency, there are also very real downsides. Depending on the culture in the country, being overly public in the 'warning phase' can have the result that partners will pull out of agreements, donations will be held back and volunteers good name get damaged (and withdraw from the organization). Publishing such warnings could very well in effect kill off the affiliate, and make the warning moot. Another side effect of going public with such warnings is that people get real defensive. This is already sensitive when you involve all members, but this gets even worse when you involve the whole world.
Efforts of AffCom should not focus (imho) on sanctions or punishing, but rather on adjusting the processes and practices of the organization to align with movement values and directions. Diplomacy often requires some silence - and as long as AffCom still sees hope that the organization can adjust and repair - I'm all for it that they use silent backchannels. Admitting to the problem is required to start fixing it - and such admission is usually easier achieved in private.
A community that tried to get maximum effective affiliates needs to find a healthy balance between transparency and diplomacy. Where exactly that balance is to be found, it a complicated question though.
Lodewijk
On Wed, Sep 19, 2018 at 9:15 AM Isarra Yos zhorishna@gmail.com wrote:
Also apt to be useful information for other affiliates - oh, they did or didn't do blah and it added up to serious problems; we've been heading in that sort of direction too and should probably stop, or similar - often it's things we can all learn from, so if presented as such and handled consistently, there need not be shame in it.
On 19/09/2018 02:49, Pine W wrote:
I have several thoughts regarding this and related issues, but my main feeling is that we should not hide news that would be in the public interest to communicate, such as the suspension of an affiliate or an investigation into an affiliate's use of trademarks, simply because it is bad news or embarrassing news.
There are good reasons to keep certain information private, such as preparations for pending litigation or personally identifying information that has not been made public. The potential for negative publicity if information is published, such as the suspension of an affiliate, isn't sufficient justification for keeping information private.
Good governance is difficult to do if relevant information is kept
private.
One of the benefits of having news regarding official actions be public
is
that the public can evaluate the performance of the officials (in this case, Affcom). Transparency is a useful deterrent against favoritism, negligence, and other problems in public service organizations in
general.
I generally want transparency regarding both the official actions of affiliates and the official actions of Affcom. I would like Affcom to set an example of being transparent by default, whether news is good or bad.
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