The Routledge Companion to Trust

16Organizational Trust Repair

Nicole Gillespie and Sabina Siebert

Introduction

Organizational trust is a fundamental building block of organizations. However, as the recent corporate governance crises demonstrate, trust is often very difficult to restore once broken (Kramer & Lewicki, 2009). Understanding how organizational trust can be repaired has become an important topic for researchers in organization studies, as well as for practitioners (Bachmann, Gillespie & Priem, 2015; Kramer & Lewicki, 2010). A recent example that high lights the practical focus of this work is the emissions scandal at Volkswagen. The Volkswagen Group built their reputation on manufacturing environmentally friendly cars pledging that by 2018 the company would be the ...