The Trust Crisis
by Sandra J. Sucher and Shalene Gupta
BUSINESSES PUT AN AWFUL LOT OF EFFORT into meeting the diverse needs of their stakeholders—customers, investors, employees, and society at large. But they’re not paying enough attention to one ingredient that’s crucial to productive relationships with those stakeholders: trust.
Trust, as defined by organizational scholars, is our willingness to be vulnerable to the actions of others because we believe they have good intentions and will behave well toward us. In other words, we let others have power over us because we think they won’t hurt us and will in fact help us. When we decide to interact with a company, we believe it won’t deceive us or abuse its relationship with us. However, trust ...
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