Kellogg, Northwestern launch interdisciplinary Trust Project

Glenn Jeffers and Theo Anderson

Kellogg, in conjunction with Northwestern University, has launched The Trust Project, which will bring decades of research about this complex human emotion into the hands and heads of academics and business leaders alike.

The first phase of the project, which launched March 1, features the debut of nearly 30 brief, interactive videos on the subject, bringing varying perspectives from both Kellogg and Northwestern scholars as well as business and military experts. The videos are housed together on the project’s microsite, and are searchable by topic, discipline or contributor.

Planning for subsequent phases is still in the works, but may include new videos and other media, as well as opportunities to convene and continue the discussion.

“The purpose of the project is to advance the level of discussion on trust,” says Kent Grayson, the faculty coordinator for the project and an associate professor of marketing. He emphasizes that understanding and exploring trust become increasingly vital as technology and globalization erase boundaries between people, organizations, and markets.

“Trust is a foundational concept for understanding business, society and consumer behavior,” Grayson says. “Our project takes a new approach and explores the many dimensions, complexities and challenges of trust through multiple, connected perspectives.”

Capitalizing on expertise

The idea for the unique collaboration struck Grayson, whose focus on the topic began when he joined Kellogg in 2002, as he connected with colleagues from a wide range of disciplines across the university and discovered that many of them had already spent a good deal of their academic careers researching trust from their own perspectives. Together they created The Trust Project to capitalize on and house their collective expertise in one place.

Two examples of the broad range of project contributors include Adam Waytz, an associate professor of management and organizations at Kellogg, who explores the psychological foundations of trust and how technological innovation relates to trust-building; and Kelly Michelson, MD, MPH, an associate professor of pediatrics at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine, who discusses the critical role of communication, especially empathetic listening, in building trust in health care contexts.

“I can’t remember the last time I was involved in a project with so many people from so many different disciplines,” says Michelson. “Even more interesting, think, is that this project focuses on the area of trust. It is not the first topic that might come to mind for a project like this, and it wasn’t necessarily something I intended to study, but it’s a common aspect of our humanity, and something that came up again and again in my work.”

The project is more than an academic pursuit, however. Participating business leaders like Larry Rosen, CEO of Harry Rosen, Inc., Canada’s largest quality menswear retailer, bring significant, practical insights that a purely academic article would lack.

“Including business leaders’ perspectives gives us a broader view of the ways trust plays into our everyday decisions,” Grayson says. “Not only does this interdisciplinary approach demonstrate that Northwestern at the leading edge of academic thinking, it also highlights how academic research influences and shapes business practice.”

A Shared Human Experience

Because trust is a basic aspect of everyday human existence, the project’s research and resulting videos are useful to more than business leaders and academics.

“Everyone who enters into relationships, whether personal or professional, makes important decisions relating to trust every day,” Grayson says.

Recognizing this common ground and bringing people together to consider the topic is essentially the project’s mission.

“We set out to bridge divides between disciplines, scholars and broader audiences, and doing so is one of my proudest accomplishments,” says Grayson. “I hope that when people hear about our work, they’ll say, ‘I think about trust a lot myself—I wonder what I can learn by hearing how other people think about it?’

“I think it’s amazing that Kellogg has invested in this. I don't know that it would happen anywhere else.”

When Trust Works and When It Doesn’t

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