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The event of Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s (CME) negative oil clearing price on April 20, 2020, in which commodity futures traded in a negative range, is significant to the financial community worldwide. Through discussions of the so-called “best practice” rule for professional behaviors in practice with a number of examples and standards established by professional organizations, it seems that a better option for CME’s execution would have been to first seek feedback from stakeholders internationally within a reasonable transition period before implementing the proposed new trading (or updating) rule that came into effect in the month of April 2020.

The last few decades have seen the transformation of the modern supply chain from a simple (inflexible, linear, and reactive) to a complex (flexible, multi-echelon, and proactive) supply chain. The supply chain encompasses a global network of third-party service providers (Logistic, IT, Customer support, Warehousing), practicing numerous procedures and policies. The complex management of retailers, buyers’ and suppliers’ relations are susceptible to quite a few challenges (transparency, trust, security). Blockchain is an advanced technology with features like distributed notes, storage mechanism, consensus algorithm, decentralized structure, smart contracting, and asymmetric encryption, which helps to ensure supply chain network prominence, security, trust, and transparency. Blockchain technology turbocharges the profitability and efficiency of the supply chain. The level of security like physical management is complemented by process enhancements and technological leverages. Blockchain provides shared ledgers with error-free decentralized digital records, while every participating member act as a catalyst, by maintaining his data set for the transaction. Digitalization eliminates the need for traditional third-party verification; participants may self-verify the transactions. The information once entered is inconvertible and can never be obliterated. Transacted data is stored in time-stamped blocks and serves as the data structure. Blockchain technology serves flawlessly with features like storage mechanism and storage nodes, smart contract, consensus algorithm, and asymmetric encryption. Blockchain technology is successfully implemented in various sectors like finance, banking, IoT, and forex transactions. Current research focuses on providing abridged details of blockchain and serves to introduce its innumerable applications emphasizing the potential to transform supply chain provenance, business process reengineering, to security enhancement for the success of omnichannel retail supply chain.

The cockroach farming industry in China has grown without much publicity. However, after a building housing a cockroach farm was leveled in the city of Dafeng, Jiangsu province, under the assumption it was vacant, millions of cockroaches escaped out into the open. Authorities had to work quickly to prevent the swarm of roaches from reaching farming and residential areas. This case breaks open the ethical issues involved in cockroach farming and discusses questions of industry transparency.

Extant studies and my own work show that in US listed corporations, the presence of a firm’s founder adds value to the firm. The incremental value increases with the extent of decision rights controlled by the founder. Furthermore, the value addition is higher if the founder CEO is younger at the time of the initial public offering and decreases with the founder’s tenure in the firm. Further investigation reveals that the founders add value by improving operating performance and being more transparent than similar non-founder firms. Moreover, the founders are more focused on the strategic positioning of the firm in improving operating performance — they improve profit margins in differentiated firms while improving efficiency in firms with cost-leadership strategy. Analysts and investors can benefit by incorporating these insights into their analysis.

How an organisation responds to crises and disasters has significant implications, for not only its reputation and brand but also its business continuity. We propose that four important considerations, power, honesty, transparency and timeliness, must be addressed when designing crisis communication. We then discuss how failure to give these priority can lead to emotional contagion, conspiracy theories, moral panics and fake news. We conclude by proposing that if crisis communication management is to be effective, then not only should it be ethical and socially responsible but also contingent, stakeholder centric and involving cycles of sensemaking and sense giving.

Corruption has traditionally been wildly rampant in the energy sector and its effects have proved to be extremely dramatic. For decades energy companies have perpetrated corrupt practices with impunity to obtain from the local governments the green light to construct intrusive energy infrastructures, which have the potential of causing serious damages to a country’s environment and social fabric. This illicit way of carrying out business activities has been de facto tolerated by governments for a long time. It affected particular developing nations, causing the so-called “resource curse”. Then, almost unpredictably, over the course of last two decades, significant and increasingly determined efforts have been devoted to fighting against such a criminal phenomenon. It is well established that the role that transparency plays within such a grim scenario is fundamental. This chapter will examine the intimate relationship between the lack of corporate transparency and corruption, and analyze the most important legal instruments that have been developed to encourage a transparent way of conducting business activities in the energy sector at the international, regional and domestic level. Then, will also focus on the recent Trump’s administration decision to nullify the US transparency rules for the extractive industries analyzing the scope of its potentially dramatic consequences.

The release of economic and social data by a government provides many benefits to its citizens on a number of different levels. However, this willingness (or otherwise) to release information to the public may also be useful as a signal of the degree of political and institutional transparency. To that end, a new index is developed that has extensive coverage across countries (175) and time (1960–2005), and is based on the quantity of reported socio-economic data contained in the World Development Indicators and the International Finance Statistics databases. This chapter briefly outlines the construction of this index, and introduces a number of case studies and illustrations that highlight the importance of transparency in economic development.