Trust In Business Is A Means For Greater Business Efficiency

All businesses strive to be effective and efficient. Whilst the hallmark of a capitalist economy is self-interest and competition, cooperation is also necessary in order to further efficiency and productivity. For a business to be successful, the people within need to develop relationships amongst each other as well as outside the organization in order to be able to work with one another. These relationships are a function of trust. Trust is the reliance on the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing. Therefore building trust is a vital step towards maintaining and promoting business efficiency. However, in terms of business ethics, the sole purpose of the use of trust is to promote business efficiency.

Customers and the community put trust in businesses and their methods by buying their products. Businesses trust fiduciaries that act for them by working with them to acquire their expertise. Even within a business there is trust in the form of employee-employer relationships. For example, employees trust that they will receive compensation for their work after certain time intervals or after producing certain units of outputs. If there is a lack of trust, these relationships will disintegrate and business efficiency will be reduced.

However, trust in business can be used as a manipulative tool by managers and employers to get more out of their workers. Managers may sometimes “empower” one of their employees as a gift of ‘trust’ only to give them more responsibility than they can chew as a setup for blaming them which is not really under their control. This form of trust is ‘phony’ and negative.

Anita Superson supports the idea of the need for solid employer-employee relationships in the workplace. “The emplo...

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...to entrust others in order to get their own work done efficiently.

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