In these uncertain times, trust has never mattered more. This is especially true for business: a recent study by Deloitte finds that a scandal or adverse event related to trust can erode a company’s market cap by up to fifty percent and 85 percent of customers will abandon a brand in the wake of such an incident. Even if customers return, the economic impact of trust is undeniable, but what is it? Poorly understood, efforts to build corporate trust are often nothing more than meaningless exercises in reputation management.
According to Harvard Business School experts Sandra J. Sucher and Shalene Gupta trust is indeed definable, measurable, unfixed, and salvageable. In The Power of Trust: How Companies Build It, Lose It, Regain It, they distill two decades of research to give trust a spine and provide a framework to help companies understand what trust is and how to earn it.
Sandra J. Sucher is a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School and an internationally recognized trust researcher. The Power of Trust: How Companies Earn It, Lose It, Regain It, is her third book. It is based on two decades of research on global companies’ best practices and in the gray areas of business—where responsibilities to investors, customers, employees, and society pull companies and their leaders in different directions. Sandra is on the Edelman Trust Institute advisory board and has collaborated with Deloitte on TrustIQ™, a proprietary tool that measures key elements of trust in major corporations and public sector organizations.
Photo by Evgenia Eliseeva
Photo by Julia Featheringill
John Hamilton “Jack” Bush (March 20, 1909 – January 24, 1977) was a Canadian abstract painter. A member of Painters Eleven, his paintings are associated with the Color Field movement and Post-Painterly Abstraction. Inspired by Henri Matisse and American abstract expressionist painters like Helen Frankenthaler and Morris Louis, Bush’s vibrant paintings are joyful and poignant.