The IABC Handbook of Organizational Communication: A Guide to Internal Communication, Public Relations, Marketing, and Leadership

Our Research Work on Building High-Trust Organizations

We began our efforts to understand trust in 2000 with a grant from the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) (Shockley-Zalabak et al., 2000). We wanted to understand what many today find critical to success: in the face of the changing organizational landscape, with its reduced interpersonal familiarity among employees scattered around the globe, how can trust contribute to an organization's ability to work effectively? We reviewed more than 3,500 articles in the research literature on trust and worked with hundreds of organizations on issues related to improving communication and leadership effectiveness. We interviewed and talked with leaders in organizations in more ...