We are hearing and reading a lot these days about the new Age of Transparency, in which organizations must go beyond traditional, tightly controlled communication and engage in a conversation with their customers, communities, employees and other stakeholders. A recent keynote speech by Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson does a great job of explaining this dramatic paradigm shift. Blogs are now big, but not yet big in the corporate world. We’re seeing a few high-profile corporate blogs, but apart from some noteable exceptions it doesn’t seem as if there’s a big stampede to adopt blogging as a corporate communication channel.

It’s easy to see why. Blogging is by its very nature a decentralized, uncontrolled style of communication that encourages dialogue and spiritied debate, and breaks down traditional boundaries. And large corporations, particularly publicly traded ones with investors to serve, are naturally centalized and tightly controlled when it comes to disclosing information.

So how can an organization reconcile the need to open up conversations with its stakeholders with the requirement for full, plain, timely and true disclosure to its investors, who are supposed to have the right to hear about important information at the same time? Ironically, the rules of disclosure have been getting stricter and more limiting even as technology is providing ways of opening things up.

And when it comes to employee communications, we know that there has always been a strong desire to control information. Anyone who has had to get an internal story approved has experienced this first hand.

So, here’s a question: what do companies need to do to encourage lively conversations among their employees without risking unwanted external leaks, and without exposing themselves to the kind of anarchy, and even bitter insurrection, that many leaders fear would come with losing control of internal communications?

It may well be time to open the shutters of the corporate bellfry and let in the fresh breeze of real human dialogue, but how?

And what role will communicators play in this new world of social media? Do we need to lead, follow, or just get out of the way?

I just posted a fairly long commentary on my blog asking the time-worn question, to whom should we report? I thought this forum would also be a good place to raise the issue.

I’m particularly interested in whether internal communicators should report directly to Human Resources, or if it’s better to have a “dotted line” and report through to, say, public affairs.

Has anyone done definitive research on this question?

Does anyone have a strong opinion, or a relevant experience that might shed some light on the issue?