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Winning trust through organisational compassion
Everywhere we look we see signs that public and private sector organisations are under pressure to protect or regain the trust of sceptical consumers, investors, government agencies and members of the general public. These audiences increasingly appear to be expecting reassurance that public and private organisations have strong values, are benevolent, and hold good intentions. Expectancy of trustworthy behaviour affects not only our usual suspects such as the banking industry, tobacco manufacturers, or serious polluters in the oil industry, but also public hospitals, local councils, educational institutions and government agencies. Trust is a precious, yet elusive commodity that every organisation aspires to obtain. Trust has been variously defined, but is generally perceived to be a response to human characteristics such as expertise, passion, honesty and goodwill; characteristics which are all relevant to interpersonal relationships and organisational behaviour (McKnight and Chervany, 2002).
Clearly, expertise is a fundamental prerequisite of gaining organisational trust as no one will want to be involved with businesses or authorities which consistently underperform. Referring to Aristotle, Williams (2008, p. 101) notes that expertise has "crucial impact on credibility", and she adds that "communicators are not taken seriously if an audience perceives that they are uninformed, for whatever reason". Statements of expertise convey what the organisation and its members are good at in a professional capacity, explaining its past achievements, resources, knowledge, formal skills and analytical ability. But claims to expertise in organisational discourse cannot stand alone in sensitive societal contexts where a premium is put on organisational accountability and responsiveness. The competence of expertise must be complemented by solid ethical standards in order to generate trustworthiness, and by a true concern for clients, customers and the environment in order to build goodwill.
In two previous studies of organisational self-presentations (Isaksson and Jorgensen, 2010, Jorgensen and Isaksson, 2008), we found that market leading PR agencies and banks have been slow in incorporating such standards and concerns to give the interpersonal and trust-inducing values of care and collaboration preference over rational discourses of expertise. This is critical insofar as the building of trust relies crucially on organisations' ability to elicit an emotionally grounded response from clients.
Already the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers had a keen awareness of orators'...