The idea of open-book management is for the business owners to share meaningful information with the employees of the company. There are several owners that dislike the idea of revealing too much information about their company to the world. That is also one of the main reasons why several small businesses end up not going public.
However, I feel that sharing financial information to people within the company would be a different story. It is proven that sharing most of the financial statement to the employees actually enhance the performance from the workers as well as building a more personal and engaging attitude towards their job.
A really simple analogy from the New York Times writer John Patrick would be going out to bowling with your employees. If every time someone rolls a ball down the lane, a cloth descends before anyone gets to see how many pins get knocked down, how long would it take for the employees to get bored? Not very long. So by keeping the score and numbers of the results away from the people, they would not be nearly as engaged in their job as they should be (John Patrick).
From my analysis, owners aren’t comfortable with their employees knowing the amount of money they take away from the profits in the company. Ironically, that would create a mysterious aspect to the company if the employees did not know where exactly the money they worked hard for was going. Would not it be better if the employees were more informed about their performance of the company?
Sources-
http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/17/why-dont-more-owners-open-their-books/?ref=smallbusiness
