(2) Leadership: Trustworthiness and Ethical Stewardship

Introduction:

The problem to be investigated is the correlation between how leadership, trustworthiness, and ethical stewardship can coexist in a corporation. Globally, the market place has become extremely competitive due to the advancements in technology and the Internet. In a global marketplace, it’s important to understand the relationships between leadership styles and culture, trustworthiness of other key executives, and stewardship. The relationship that seems to be present is one that is based on the needs of stakeholders to be able to expect specific things from the company so that they can develop a stable reliance on that company (Kantsperger & Kunz, 2010; Castaldo, 2007, p. 57). All working together, the elements need to be combined in such a way that an organizational culture can be established. Trust is key in any business relationship and will be an ingredient to success in a highly competitive global market.

Building Trust in Business:

According to Dr. Duane C. Tway, Jr., as he published in his 1993 dissertation, A Construct of Trust, trust is, "the state of readiness for unguarded interaction with someone or something." With that said, a company with a high level of cultural trust has to lead by example from the top down. A social relationship that has trust as a foundational basis has the ability to initiate both ad hoc and contractual interactions quickly and easily. This is because each person understands what is expected of them and what they can expect from their partner (Coldwell, Hayes & Long, 2010). Without trust in the business culture is just as good as a relationship with no common interests. All things are said to be built on trust. We can look at “trust” to be our first building block of a functional corporate culture.

Using one of the biggest and well known examples of the effects of a collapsed corporate culture would be ENRON. Trust is not just something that each employee checks off on in the employee handbook. It applies...