Abstract for: The Dynamics of Public Trust in a Business Organisation: Perspective from a Focus Group of Business Consultants

Whilst trust is an increasingly popular subject amongst management scholars, very few scholars have attempted to address the public-business trust relationship. However, it is the loss of public trust in business (and the need to restore it) which appears to be of the most concern in practice. This paper discusses the perspective of a group of experienced business consultants on factors that drive public trust in a business organisation and examines the causal structure of these drivers in order to determine public trust. The focus group design was influenced by group model building practices. The key insights include how they perceive the importance of competence over characters, how they identify trust drivers, and how they perceive the interplays between trust drivers, trustworthiness dimensions and the moderating factors. A causal loop diagram is used to map the key insights into a conceptual model.