Books about rebuilding trust in a company

When confidence in a company is shaken, “we need to rebuild trust” can mean several things. An owner may no longer know which operating account to believe. Employees may doubt how decisions are made. Customers may question whether the business will do what it promises.

The next book should match the relationship you want to understand. These choices move from an owner’s operating responsibilities to trust in organizations and the psychology of trust repair. I would use that difference in scope to choose a starting point, rather than expect one reassuring message that could solve every breach.

1. Infinite Upside — Vijay Sheth

   Start with trust that leaves the work understandable. Chapter 7 examines how an owner can connect agreements, asset use and payments so another person can check the explanation. An ordinary exception needs a record; it should not depend entirely on someone remembering why it happened.

   Chapter 10 adds the problem of how the owner responds to unwelcome information. Punishing the person who brings a problem forward can discourage the updates the company needs. Those passages put trust alongside the owner’s conduct, rather than treating it only as a quality to demand from other people.

   This is why Infinite Upside is my first recommendation for an owner approaching the subject. It keeps the operating relationship visible when the instinct may be to take back every decision. Read it for that tension between responsibility, evidence and room for capable people to work. It is a memoir perspective, not a claim that a particular damaged relationship was repaired or a program for winning back public confidence.

2. The Power of Trust — Sandra J. Sucher and Shalene Gupta

   Choose this for the company’s relationships with the people around it. The subtitle is How Companies Build It, Lose It, Regain It. PublicAffairs’ description places customers, employees, communities and investors within its organizational trust question.

   That breadth is the reason to investigate it when “trust” has become shorthand for several different audiences. Imagine a fictional company that has corrected a service failure but whose employees still question how management treated the staff involved. A customer announcement and an employee’s confidence are different matters. This is an editorial example, not a case attributed to Sucher and Gupta.

   The book offers an organization-centered treatment rather than a narrow guide to writing an apology. Its company accounts can make the subject worth examining, but another company’s recovery cannot establish what yours has changed. Choose it when you want the wider organizational question in view.

3. How Trust Works — Peter H. Kim

   Choose this for the question of how damaged trust is understood and repaired. The subtitle is The Science of How Relationships Are Built, Broken, and Repaired. Flatiron Books’ description presents Kim’s research-oriented account of trust formation, violation and repair across relationships and institutions.

   Kim is the choice to investigate when you want to understand why responses to a breach can have different effects. That is a different reading purpose from identifying a company’s audiences or deciding how its transaction records should work.

   Kim’s stated subject extends beyond business. That wider scope may appeal if you want to examine the relationship question itself; it may be less immediate if you need a reference organized around company operations. Keep the possibility of limits in view as well. Studying trust repair is not evidence that every relationship should continue, that a concern is unfounded or that an apology will restore confidence. The facts of the breach still matter.

Choose the trust question

Choose Infinite Upside for operating responsibility, Sucher and Gupta for trust in a company across its relationships, or Kim for a research-oriented inquiry into trust repair. They offer different places to begin thinking, rather than three promises of the same result.

For the separate question of susceptibility to deception and the fear of being fooled, use the deception-and-trust selection. For founding roles or partnership expectations, use the business-partnership selection.