Trust

Abstract

"A similar picture could be painted for all the professions, indeed for all areas of human activity. Trust is the natural in-between and when it is betrayed we all suffer. To use John Donne’s famous words: No man is an island, entire of itself. Emerson echoed this in his essay on history: Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. Because of this interconnectedness, trust is vital. Interconnectedness is a current reality when we view the global scale of multinational commercial and banking activity. We may want to hoist the drawbridge, but a trading nation simply cannot walk away. We are interconnected, and with the many troubles that there are, national and commercial self-interest is sure to put trust under strain. It is a time for stability and courage. At a recent talk a fashion entrepreneur described the sourcing experiences he had had in various countries. A change of supplier, due to market conditions, could make or break, for quality or reliability failure could destroy his reputation. Judgment was clearly important, but, in the end, he had to trust. In one instance he extended credit to a family whose work he judged was skilled and careful. Now that family runs a factory. Judgment and the strength to trust had paid its dividend. In this mechanistic age when e-mails flash across the world, our lapses may be understandable. Indeed, we might be tempted to think that the age-old human virtues are somehow out of date. But we all know, at those crisis points in life, how we prize those self-same values. The glaze of modernity casts its spell, and the drive for ‘bottom line’ reality fixes our attention. The models of business school practice also occupy our thinking. However, if we slip our anchor from the tested principles of trust and decency, the bill to be presented could be beyond our means. In fact, the present crisis if analysed, gives ample precedent."(pg 1)