<< Project on Public Trust in Business  l  Agenda  l  Partners  l  Media Coverage 

Partner Organizations

In 2007, the Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics and the Arthur W. Page Society set out to investigate the current landscape of public trust in business. The goal was to provide business leaders with knowledge on which they can base decisions and actions. The efforts resulted in the publication of a special report, The Dynamics of Public Trust in Business—Emerging Opportunities for Leaders.

This report represents the initial step in a larger effort to identify opportunities for business leaders to build and sustain public trust in their companies, in their sectors, and in the institution of business.

"Public trust in business" roughly describes the level and type of vulnerability the public is willing to assume with regard to business relations.

Although public trust in business has been very low for decades, our knowledge of the actual dynamics of public trust remain a largely uncharted territory in need of exploration and mapping.

Leaders need to become as expert in the trust environment as they are in the technological, economic, political, and competitive environments. Developing this expertise, however, requires building an actionable knowledge base of the dynamics of public trust. This is the charge of the Project on Public Trust in Business and its partner organizations which include:

The Arthur W. Page Society is a select membership organization composed primarily of the chief communication officers (CCOs) of the world's top multinational corporations, and the CEOs of the world's largest public relations agencies. The organization's members also include academics from the leading business and communications schools. The Page Society is dedicated to strengthening the management policy role of chief communications officers. For more information please visit http://www.awpagesociety.com.

The Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics (www.corporate-ethics.org) is an independent business ethics center established in partnership with Business Roundtable—an association of chief executive officers of leading corporations with a combined workforce of more than 10 million employees and $4.5 trillion in annual revenues—and leading academics from America’s best business schools. The Institute brings together leaders from business and academia to fulfill its mission to renew and enhance the link between ethical behavior and business practice through executive education programs, practitioner-focused research and outreach.