Chapter 28
Making the Case for Trust
Building a trust-based organization frequently requires persuading others of the value of trust. The case for trust can be made on many dimensions. In this chapter we focus on those that are most likely to be of immediate interest to you and your organization: trust at the organizational level and its positive economic impact. We also explore the social and ethical benefits of trust.
You may find yourself making the case for greater degrees of trust in your organization or your business. We would like to make that job easier for you by describing the rewards and advantages of becoming an organization that leads with trust.
The main organizational benefits fall into three categories:
1. Economic benefits of trust
2. Social benefits of trust
3. Ethical benefits of trust
There are many other economic, social, and psychological benefits of trust that extend outside organizational boundaries and are therefore beyond the scope of this book. The interested reader might pursue Francis Fukuyama’s book Trust,1 which describes how differing national-cultural approaches to trust (for example, in China, Italy, and the Scandinavian countries) have created different models of business, commerce, and economics. Eric Uslaner’s Moral Foundations of Trust2 uses extensive data to explain why people come to place their trust in strangers and draws implications for social administrators and public policy. John Gottman’s Science of Trust3 explores interpersonal ...
