7 - Good Trust

Summary

There are three reasons why a business leader would want to undertake any consideration of ethics. They are legal, economic, and moral identity. I have already sketched the legal and economic dimensions. A firm may consider ethical concerns because of legal pressures or because they see the economic benefits of pursuing them. The moral identity dimension is Good Trust. It is Good Trust because it is a place where individuals find a sense of their own well-being in the welfare of others. One could also call this “Beautiful Trust” too, because it is about the passion and beauty of people caring for others. At its core, Good Trust is about getting people to really care about ethics, not just because that is what is required by law (Hard Trust) or what is rewarded (Real Trust) but because it is something that inspires them.

The task of Good Trust is to foster or to free passion apart from its deleterious effects. Good Trust is about engaging human quests for moral excellence and spiritual identity. All of the rules of the moral theory, and all of the financial rewards for behavior will only go so far if a person simply does not want to be ethical. All the theory in the world equals zero if the motivation for implementing it is zero. So energizing a passion about behavior enervates all aspects of ethics.