Trust as Currency

I had an interesting email conversation with Steven Smith of HD BizBlog regarding the nature of trust in today's business world, after he pointed me to guest article on Slacker Manager he'd written. His premise is that trust is the "new currency" of business, which immediately triggered the following comment from me (I apologize for the poor grammar, and I've inserted a missing fragment):

Interesting post! A side comment: Trust has always been the currency of the world…it’s what underlies actual money, and it’s what allows [society to function]. Organizationally speaking, I think the various types of corporate structures have minted their own bank notes for trust: in the hierarchy, the implicit promise is that if you do your job, you will be rewarded and taken care of. This has broken down as people realize that the companies themselves do not have the same loyalty to them as they expect from their employees. And thus, that particular type of trust has become devalued within the organization itself and becomes worthless.

Stephen has posted the entire thread, including his thoughts and my other feedback, over in his blog post The Importance of Trust in the Web 2.0 Economy, and would like to get a conversation going on the topic. It's not every day that I get to bring up Richard M. Nixon in an email conversation! So check it out and give him some love :-)