Losing Trust in the World


Book Description

In July 1943, the Gestapo arrested an obscure member of the resistance movement in Nazi-occupied Belgium. When his torture-inflicting interrogators determined he was no use to them and that he was a Jew, he was deported to Auschwitz. Liberated in 1945, Jean Améry went on to write a series of essays about his experience. No reflections on torture are more compelling. Améry declared that the victims of torture lose trust in the world at the “very first blow.” The contributors to this volume use their expertise in Holocaust studies to reflect on ethical, religious, and legal aspects of torture then and now. Their inquiry grapples with the euphemistic language often used to disguise torture and with the question of whether torture ever constitutes a “necessary evil.” Differences of opinion reverberate, raising deeper questions: Can trust be restored? What steps can we as individuals and as a society take to move closer to a world in which torture is unthinkable?




The End of Authority


Book Description

Around the world, citizens have lost faith in their political and economic institutions—leading to unprecedented levels of political instability and economic volatility. From Moscow to Brussels, from Washington to Cairo, the failure of democracies and autocracies to manage the fiscal and political crises facing us has led to a profound disquiet, spawning protest movements of the left, right, and center. In The End of Authority, Douglas E. Schoen systematically analyzes the leadership crises facing democracies and autocratic governments alike. He presents a firsthand, detailed assessment for why this collapse in trust happened; and offers a comprehensive blueprint for how we can restore public trust in government and economic institutions in a world of division, dissension, and governments clearly lacking in responsiveness to citizen concerns. Schoen outlines bold and clear solutions and offers practical steps to fix our democracy and rebuild international institutions.




A Time to Build


Book Description

A leading conservative intellectual argues that to renew America we must recommit to our institutions Americans are living through a social crisis. Our politics is polarized and bitterly divided. Culture wars rage on campus, in the media, social media, and other arenas of our common life. And for too many Americans, alienation can descend into despair, weakening families and communities and even driving an explosion of opioid abuse. Left and right alike have responded with populist anger at our institutions, and use only metaphors of destruction to describe the path forward: cleaning house, draining swamps. But, as Yuval Levin argues, this is a misguided prescription, rooted in a defective diagnosis. The social crisis we confront is defined not by an oppressive presence but by a debilitating absence of the forces that unite us and militate against alienation. As Levin argues, now is not a time to tear down, but rather to build and rebuild by committing ourselves to the institutions around us. From the military to churches, from families to schools, these institutions provide the forms and structures we need to be free. By taking concrete steps to help them be more trustworthy, we can renew the ties that bind Americans to one another.




The Power of Trust


Book Description

A ground-breaking exploration of the changing nature of trust and how to bridge the gap from where you are to where you need to be. Trust is the most powerful force underlying the success of every business. Yet it can be shattered in an instant, with a devastating impact on a company’s market cap and reputation. How to build and sustain trust requires fresh insight into why customers, employees, community members, and investors decide whether an organization can be trusted. Based on two decades of research and illustrated through vivid storytelling, Sandra J. Sucher and Shalene Gupta examine the economic impact of trust and the science behind it, and conclusively prove that trust is built from the inside out. Trust emerges from a company being the “real deal”: creating products and services that work, having good intentions, treating people fairly, and taking responsibility for all the impacts an organization creates, whether intended or not. When trust is in the room, great things can happen. Sucher and Gupta’s innovative foundation for executing the elements of trust—competence, motives, means, impact—explains how trust can be woven into the day-to-day and the long term. Most importantly, even when lost, trust can be regained, as illustrated through their accounts of companies across the globe that pull themselves out of scandal and corruption by rebuilding the vital elements of trust.




Trust in Contemporary Society


Book Description

Trust in Contemporary Society, by well-known trust researchers, deals with conceptual, theoretical and social interaction analyses, historical data on societies, national surveys or cross-national comparative studies, and methodological issues related to trust. The authors are from a variety of disciplines: psychology, sociology, political science, organizational studies, history, and philosophy, and from Britain, the United States, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Australia, Germany, and Japan. They bring their vast knowledge from different historical and cultural backgrounds to illuminate contemporary issues of trust and distrust. The socio-cultural perspective of trust is important and increasingly acknowledged as central to trust research. Accordingly, future directions for comparative trust research are also discussed. Contributors include: Jack Barbalet, John Brehm, Geoffrey Hosking, Robert Marsh, Barbara A. Misztal, Guido Möllering, Bart Nooteboom, Ken J. Rotenberg, Jiří Šafr, Masamichi Sasaki, Meg Savel, Markéta Sedláčková, Jörg Sydow, Piotr Sztompka.




Broken Trust


Book Description

Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop was the largest landowner and richest woman in the Hawaiian kingdom. Upon her death in 1884, she entrusted her property--"known as Bishop Estate--"to five trustees in order to create and maintain an institution that would benefit the children of Hawai'i: Kamehameha Schools. A century later, Bishop Estate controlled nearly one out of every nine acres in the state, a concentration of private land ownership rarely seen anywhere in the world. Then in August 1997 the unthinkable happened: Four revered kupuna (native Hawaiian elders) and a professor of trust-law publicly charged Bishop Estate trustees with gross incompetence and massive trust abuse. Entitled "Broken Trust," the statement provided devastating details of rigged appointments, violated trusts, cynical manipulation of the trust's beneficiaries, and the shameful involvement of many of Hawai'i's powerful. No one is better qualified to examine the events and personalities surrounding the scandal than two of the original "Broken Trust" authors.Their comprehensive account together with historical background, brings to light information that has never before been made public, including accounts of secret meetings and communications involving Supreme Court justices.




Rebuilding Trust in the Workplace


Book Description

An expert guide to resolving coworker conflicts and healing hurt feelings and resentments, to create a more productive—and pleasant—environment. Are you feeling less engaged, less committed, and more skeptical at work? Do you find yourself isolated? Or are you caught in the middle of co-workers’ interpersonal conflicts? If so, you may be experiencing the symptoms of broken trust in workplace relationships. Small but hurtful situations accumulate over time into the confidence-busting, commitment-breaking, energy-draining patterns consistent with broken trust. Everyone has experienced gossiping, missed deadlines, someone taking credit for other people’s work, or “little white lies.” You may have been hurt. You may have realized that you inadvertently let others down. Or you may be wondering how to help others reeling from broken trust. No matter your vantage point, this new book from two award-winning authors and consultants to top-tier organizations offers a proven seven-step process to heal pain and rebuild trust. This compassionate, practical approach helps you reframe the experience, take responsibility, forgive, let go, and move on. You can feel motivated to go to work again—and safe to be more fully who you are, giving your organization your best thinking, highest intention, risk-taking, and creativity. And in a place of self-discovery, self-trust, and authenticity, you can connect more fully with others in your personal life as well. While there have been many books on recovering from betrayal in personal relationships, this is the first to focus specifically on the workplace—and the first to give equal weight to what to do when you have hurt others. “Rebuilding trust is a job you cannot ignore if you want a thriving workplace. Don’t miss this book.” —John Kador, author of Effective Apology




Building Trust


Book Description

Losing someone’s trust is easy—building it back is much harder. In Building Trust: Exceptional Leadership in an Uncertain World, Darryl Stickel answers the key questions leaders face: what is trust, why is it essential to leadership, and how can I become more trusted? Trust is a basic, intuitive human reaction; it holds the fabric of our society together. Unfortunately, trust is at an all-time low in our institutions, governments, healthcare, and law enforcement. Fewer people attend a place of worship than at any time in the last eighty-plus years. Citizens fear their votes are not being counted and that politicians are lying to them—that the system itself has no legitimacy. People fail to take life-saving vaccines because they don’t trust what medical professionals and policymakers tell them. In law enforcement, a lack of trust motivates non-cooperation, fear, and a breakdown in law and order. We are facing an unprecedented trust-deficit crisis. In Building Trust: Exceptional Leadership in an Uncertain World, Darryl Stickel, one of the world’s foremost experts on trust, outlines his groundbreaking Trust Unlimited blueprint for building trust. Stickel moves away from the traditional approach of influencing people’s willingness to trust—the con artist’s tactic—to employing one or more of ten levers, which leaders can “pull” to close the gap between how much they are trusted and how much they should be. This approach also makes them more trustable and increases trust where it is deficient. Detailed case studies provide examples of his Trust Unlimited model in action.




The Oxford Handbook of Social and Political Trust


Book Description

This volume explores the foundations of trust, and whether social and political trust have common roots. Contributions by noted scholars examine how we measure trust, the cultural and social psychological roots of trust, the foundations of political trust, and how trust concerns the law, the economy, elections, international relations, corruption, and cooperation, among myriad societal factors. The rich assortment of essays on these themes addresses questions such as: How does national identity shape trust, and how does trust form in developing countries and in new democracies? Are minority groups less trusting than the dominant group in a society? Do immigrants adapt to the trust levels of their host countries? Does group interaction build trust? Does the welfare state promote trust and, in turn, does trust lead to greater well-being and to better health outcomes? The Oxford Handbook of Social and Political Trust considers these and other questions of critical importance for current scholarly investigations of trust.




The Revolt of The Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium


Book Description

How insurgencies—enabled by digital devices and a vast information sphere—have mobilized millions of ordinary people around the world. In the words of economist and scholar Arnold Kling, Martin Gurri saw it coming. Technology has categorically reversed the information balance of power between the public and the elites who manage the great hierarchical institutions of the industrial age: government, political parties, the media. The Revolt of the Public tells the story of how insurgencies, enabled by digital devices and a vast information sphere, have mobilized millions of ordinary people around the world. Originally published in 2014, The Revolt of the Public is now available in an updated edition, which includes an extensive analysis of Donald Trump’s improbable rise to the presidency and the electoral triumphs of Brexit. The book concludes with a speculative look forward, pondering whether the current elite class can bring about a reformation of the democratic process and whether new organizing principles, adapted to a digital world, can arise out of the present political turbulence.