You raise a critical point. It’s hard to overstate the power of trust, and its relevance to organizations, in strategy and economics as well as HR and general effectiveness.

Nothing against Adler, but there’s a far more accessible, concise and business-relevant look at trust. At the risk of appearing self-serving, have a look at http://www.trustedadvisor.com. Some headlines:

–Trust takes two players: one who trusts, and one who is trusted. The latter we evaluate by what we call trustworthiness.

–Trustworthiness can be described in the Trust Equation: (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) / (self-orientation).

–You can take your own TQ (trust quotient) in a self-assessment test taken by over 6,000 people thus far at http://www.trustedadvisor.com/trustquotient

–the fastest way to raise someone else’s trustworthiness is, paradoxically, to trust them

–there is a simple five-step process for the creation of trust in interpersonal interactions in business or life in general, and

–there are four organizational principles designed to increase the level of trust (both trusting and trustworthiness) in organizations,

–for an overview of all these points, see
http://trustedadvisor.com/cgreen.articles/38/Tr...