Rebuilding trust in business

Trust is a fundamental building block for any successful organisation - yet trust in business has plummeted since the Global Financial Crisis.

A new report co-authored by a UQ Business School expert investigates how companies win trust and how they can rebuild it after their reputation has suffered serious damage.

Dr Nicole Gillespie, a senior lecturer in management with UQ Business School, wrote the report with Dr Graham Dietz of Durham University. The Institute of Business Ethics published their report The Recovery of Trust: Case studies of organisational failures and trust repair. (Download report here.)

Dr Gillespie said the report used real-life examples of organisations which had suffered serious failures of trust – Siemens, Mattel, Toyota, BAE Systems, and the BBC – to illustrate good and bad practice in rebuilding trust.

“What is common to all the cases we have reviewed is that trust failures typically take years to resolve, and can be both debilitating and very costly,” she said.

“A clear implication is that it pays to invest proactively in designing an organisational system that encourages and supports trustworthy conduct.”

In most of the cases cited, rebuilding trust required an overhaul of the organisational culture. However she said it was important to emphasise that a failure of trust could be repaired and it can even prove to be a catalyst to strengthen an organisation’s reputation.

“A crisis focuses and motivates the organisation, providing a strong and necessary impetus for radical change, and unleashing resources and new ways of thinking that are often difficult to leverage under normal circumstances. This is the silver lining of trust failures.

“We hope that this analysis of prominent cases of trust failure and repair serves as a helpful guide to those involved in this challenging task.”

Dr Gillespie has published a variety of papers on organisational trust. Her other research interests include leadership, teams and employee engagement.

Further information about the report and the crises faced by the organisations analysed is here.

Media: Samantha Kennerley, UQ Business School Marketing & Communications Manager, +61 (0) 433 130085, s.kennerley@business.uq.edu.au