In their new book, Aksoy and co-author Tim Keiningham, global chief strategy officer at Ipsos Loyalty, argue that many companies overlook an important gauge in customer satisfaction: the share of customers’ spending in the company. Grounded in new, rigorously-tested strategies coming out of Harvard Business and MIT Sloan School of Management, The Wallet Allocation Rule: Winning the Battle for Share (Wiley, 2015) represents an “unabashed challenge” to current customer experience management.

“We have been working on the topic of loyalty for over 15 years,” said Aksoy, a professor of marketing. “During this time we have come across lots of companies complaining about investments in making customers happier, but not necessarily paying off.”

With this conundrum as their starting point, Aksoy and Keiningham began to investigate why companies’ efforts to improve customer satisfaction or to get customers to recommend their company to others didn’t translate into market share growth. They found that most companies’ focus is far too narrow.

“The way companies go about determining what to focus on is wrong,” Aksoy said. “They focus on what makes customers happy with the company, but don’t necessarily understand—or measure—whether the same customer also shops with competitors and why. It’s really as simple as that. [The book] offers a way to determine this.”

The pair recommends in The Wallet Allocation Rule that companies shift their focus from what creates satisfied customers to why customers buy from them and their competitors. Understanding that “why” helps companies not only determine where they rank relative to their competitors in the mind of the consumer, but ultimately grow their market share.

Aksoy and Keiningham will be present for a book launch tonight at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus. The book comes out Feb. 9.

“They wanted us to study men who liked shaving. This segment seemed to defy the whole product category,” said the research team’s leader, Timothy de Waal Malefyt, Ph.D., associate professor of marketing at the Fordham Schools of Business. “Most of this target group disliked shaving altogether—a consumer category that was notorious for low involvement.”

Malefyt, a corporate anthropologist, set out to conduct ethnographic research on the shaving enthusiasts devoted to this premium-priced product line.

His work on behalf of BBDO and Gillette has inspired Malefyt’s long-term interest in brand rituals. The topic is the focus of his latest research and a chapter he authored in the soon-to-be-published Handbook of Anthropology in Business (Left Coast Press, 2014).

Not only did the shaving enthusiasts care about their appearance, Malefyt discovered, but they also greatly enjoyed their daily grooming routine—unlike their counterparts who simply wanted to get the job done. The Art of Shaving’s four-step process—pre-shave, lathering, shaving, and aftershave, complete with lathering brushes, premium blades, oils and fragrances—offered them a full experience that engages the senses.

“From this research we learned that brand rituals that involve process and effort can be something that celebrates the user and helps to develop skills they can share with other users,” he said.

In discussing what they liked about The Art of Shaving, the men interviewed talked about the fragrances, the skill of holding the razor at the right angle, and the types of blades they used—“all these sensory dimensions to shaving that most men never talked about.”

Malefyt said there are other brands that capture a similar sense of ritual and that are experiential, engaging, and sensorial. American Girl dolls are one example, in that girls can order a customized doll with their own features, they can get their hair cut and shampooed like their dolls, wear the same clothing, and learn about the history of period dolls through the book series. “There’s much more of a sense of involvement and a depth of experience with this brand than, say, a Barbie that you purchase at Wal-Mart.”

Wine clubs are another example of ritualistic, experiential brands. People learn new descriptors for expressing flavor bouquets and how to differentiate them. Each month, wine club members taste new wines and learn about the regions they are from and what foods pair well with them.

“The development of skills in rituals makes people feel that they own the brand,” Malefyt said. “They identify with it and talk about it with others. There’s a sense of community around that.”

Malefyt is among a niche of professionals who study business anthropology, a field that informs industries about how buyers are influenced by culture and human relationships. By studying consumer behaviors and shopping habits, business anthropologists help marketers better understand consumers’ needs and expectations.

“People think of anthropology as going off to study a tribe in Borneo,” said Malefyt. “Now, the world is fully developed and explored, but what has survived in anthropology are the tools to understand people from another point of view. That is really powerful.”

Malefyt’s research on consumer marketing is wide ranging, and includes specific types of purchasing experiences, such as consumer shopping habits in the grocery store. To illustrate how business anthropology can help to inform marketing strategies, he cites floor-cleaning products. Why consumers choose one cleaner over another may have less to do with the product itself and far more to do with individual ideas and relationships. Is the product environmentally friendly? Will a toddler crawl on the floor? Does a sparkling floor symbolize something you’d want guests to perceive about you? He says purchases and brand selection are more emotionally charged than we think.

Today, advertising is also more personal and sophisticated, Malefyt said. “Brands are not logos, they are experiences. Brands like American Girl, The Art of Shaving, Disney Vacations, and others create dialogue with the consumer rather than talk to them. But conversations require more social understanding of where the consumers are coming from, and that’s where anthropologists and sociologists can help out.”

In addition to leading the ethnographic unit at BBDO Worldwide, Malefyt is the recipient of a National Science Foundation grant and a Fulbright fellowship in Spain. He has published widely and is co-author of the book Advertising and Anthropology: Ethnographic Practice and Cultural Perspectives (Berg, 2012). He holds a doctorate in cultural anthropology, and was a dancer with the Joffrey Ballet until a knee injury shifted his career path.

Malefyt is also involved in planning EPIC (Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference), which will bring together professionals from different disciplines around the world to discuss the multifaceted field of marketing. Sponsored by Fordham’s Center for Positive Marketing, the conference will be held at Fordham from Sept. 7 through 10, 2014.

The United Nations has selected 24 schools worldwide to be exemplars of responsible business education, based on their emphasis on ethics and social values.

The Fordham Schools of Business are one of those 24—chosen from among 514 candidates.

Members of this “Champions Group” have embraced the U.N. initiative, Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME), which sets out six guidelines for teaching students to conduct business in ways that benefit both humankind and the environment.

The focus is on how to shift teaching away from traditional business-school models based on profit motive and maximizing shareholder wealth. The new teaching model will strive for a balance of three motivations: people, planet, and profit. It will ultimately lead, the United Nations hopes, to sustainable businesses that help serve society’s needs while not depleting natural resources for future generations.

Among the guidelines are:

• Developing students’ capabilities to be generators of sustainable value;

• Incorporating into activities and curricula the values of global social responsibility.

• Creating frameworks, materials, processes, and environments that enable effective learning for responsible leadership.

• Engaging in research that advances understanding about the social and environmental role and impact of corporations;

Within the Champions Group, Fordham’s main role will be to co-lead a curriculum development effort along with representatives from ESADE in Spain and the Graduate School of Business at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Other schools will come aboard as team members.

Membership in the U.N.’s PRME initiative has been one of Dean Donna Rapaccioli’s priorities since 2009. Even before that, Fordham had, under her leadership as dean of business faculty, become part of the U.N. Global Compact, PRME’s umbrella organization.

The Global Compact now includes more than 10,000 corporations and other organizations that have signed on to 10 principles of ethical and caring leadership.

“It is an honor to work with renowned, forward-thinking schools from all over the world to change the nature of business education,” Dean Rapaccioli said. “We have a lot to talk about with them and to learn from them.”

— Claire Curry

Friday, Oct. 25
9 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Fordham University Lincoln Center campus

The conference, which is co-sponsored by Ernst & Young, LLP, will focus on how leaders and companies can build trustworthy organizations that are exemplars in regaining the trust that has been lost in corporate and public life.

“The erosion of trust in many of our major institutions has been consistent and is now at alarmingly low levels. Comparing Gallup Poll data from 2013 with scores in the 1970s shows a 70 percent decline in confidence in Congress, a 50 percent decline in banks, more than a 30 percent decline in big business and a 30 percent decline in the presidency,” said Robert Hurley, Ph. D., professor of management and director of The Consortium.

“Fortunately, our research shows that despite the overall declines in trust, some institutions and companies have managed to become more trustworthy and have actually increased confidence among stakeholders in this somewhat cynical age we find ourselves in.”

The conference features a roster of speakers from Fordham, Harvard, Durham and Duke Universities and global organizations such as IBM; Arthur W. Page Society; the Ethics & Compliance Officer Association; Aflac; Allstate; GE; Ernst & Young, LLP; and Wyndham Worldwide.

These thought leaders will participate in plenary sessions on defining the trustworthy organization, managing reputation, board governance and trust and creating an ethical corporate culture.

For more information, visit http://www.trustinorganizations.com/

The Foundry, a joint effort between Fordham and New York City’s Department of Small Business Services (SBS), provides a collaborative space in which Fordham students, alumni, and staff, as well as other entrepreneurs, can launch small businesses and access NYC Business Solutions services. The Foundry’s mission is explicitly linked to job creation in the Bronx, and a connection to the private sector is integral to that.

Donna Rapaccioli, Ph.D., dean of Gabelli, said that partnering with corporations like BNP Paribas is vital to the University’s neighborhood outreach efforts and to the success of the Foundry.

“A big part of what the Fordham Schools of Business do is to create bridges between the academic world and the corporate world, and between the academic world and the community. So for us, this is creatinga triangle that really is at the heart of what we’re trying to achieve,” she said.

Jean-Yves Fillion, CEO of BNP Paribas North America, said that BNP’s commitmentto local communities, in this casethe Bronx, is what attracted the bank to Fordham and to the Fordham Foundry.

BNP Paribas decided last year to deepen its regional approach to corporate social responsibility initiatives, and with its largest operations in the New York City area, the Bronx was a natural fit.

“The Fordham Foundry’s goal to create businesses that remain in the Bronx, sparking economic growth and job creation, is directly aligned with BNP Paribas’ commitment to social inclusion, diversity and education,” Fillion said.

The arrangement with the Foundry is just the beginning of Fordham and BNP Paribas’ partnership.

“We envision leveraging the talents and skills of our philanthropic-minded employees to provide technical assistance to the Foundry on a voluntary basis. The Foundry is a natural fit for BNP Paribas’ employees, given the overlap between banking, job creation, and business,” Fillion said.

“We are inspired by the clear goals of Fordham University’s leaders, and we look forward to exploring other complementary ventures as well.”

Foundry Co-director Christine Janssen-Selvadurai, Ph.D., director of the entrepreneurship program at Gabelli, said she looks forward to the one-on-one relationships that will develop as a result of the partnership. BNP Paribas employees will volunteer their time as mentors. In addition, there will be opportunities for BNP employees to become fellows with the Foundry, and there are also plans to establish an executive education program they can take advantage of.

“We both look at this as a long-term partnership and not just a one-off. There are so many angles and so many different paths we can take,” Janssen-Selvadurai said.

“My favorite word for the Foundry is access—access to our members, access to our mentors, access to experts, access to continued education and workshops and all those supportive roles.”

Mitchell Fillet, lecturer in finance in the Schools of Business and Foundry co-director, concurred, saying that it’s significant that the bank is willing to partner with the Foundry and work with residents of the city’s poorest borough.

“BNP Paribas understands their activity will have the greatest impact here in the Bronx,” said Fillet.

“The fact that they can have a 170-year-old nationally ranked institution as their partner gives them a sense of comfort that their resources are going to have a true impact on our area, and not just be a little window dressing.”

BNP Paribas, which has a presence in 78 countries with nearly 200,000 employees and a strong presence in North America through its corporate and investment bank and its large retail network in the western United States, has already provided a donation to help with technical assistance to the Foundry, which opened its doors in March.

The bank is also researching the possibility of lending to a microfinance fund at the Foundry that would provide microloans to entrepreneurs. This will be an integral part of the Foundry’s mission of supporting Bronx-area business development.

Microloans are key to that community connection. Rapaccioli said it’s very much in keeping with the maxim, “Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day; teach a man to fish, and he’ll feed himself for the rest of his life.”

“Often the types of loans these individuals are looking for are not the types traditional banks will entertain. They don’t have the collateral, and sometimes the amounts are too small for banks to be interested in servicing these types of loans. So from our perspective, we’re filling a real need in the community,”she said.

The microloans are initially going to be for $5,000 or less—enough for someone to launch a business and build up their credit, but not so much that they might become overwhelmed.

“For most of my projects, I just open up academic journals, flip through them and find something interesting,” he said. “And I keep reading and then think ‘I could do something about this.’”

That “go-wherever-things-are-interesting” attitude has led Shon, an assistant professor of accounting in the Fordham Schools of Business, to a wide variety of projects.

His recent research has touched on insider trading, research and development (R&D) expenditures, the effects of market sentiment on sell-side analysts’ credibility, and option-trading strategies around earnings announcements.

His most recent paper, “Insiders’ Sales Under Rule 10b5-1 Plans and Meeting-or-Beating Earnings Expectations,” co-authored with Stanley Veliotis, Ph.D., assistant professor of accounting and taxation, will appear this year in the journal Management Science.

Shon and Veliotis examined data to determine whether company CEOs actively engaged in efforts to meet or beat earnings expectations when there was a pre-commitment to sell their equity shares. Rule 10b5-1 was instituted by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2000 to allow company heads to sell stock without raising suspicions of insider trading, by letting them pre-commit to selling a set number of shares on a date in the future.

“[We] flip it on its head and say look, if CEOs pre-commit on the front end to selling their shares, they’re just more likely to go out of their way to make sure the stock price increases at the time they need to sell,” Shon said.

“We ask, ‘Are CEOs more likely to meet or beat earning expectations if they pre-committed to selling shares beforehand?’ And we find what is perhaps pretty obvious to some critics—which is that they are.”

Shon and Veliotis confirmed these suspicions by analyzing data collected by a private firm from forms that executives file to indicate that they plan to execute a trade under Rule 10b5-1.

And while the data are clear, the “take” on such practice is two-sided. One camp says that “CEOs are fleecing all of us, including the shareholders,” he said.
“The other camp says ‘Look, for every dollar they’re getting compensated, they’re adding 10 dollars to shareholder value, isn’t that what you want?’ There’s a valid argument on both sides.”

The machinations of the stock market are of particular interest to Shon. In 2010, he published “Do Stock Returns Vary With Campaign Contributions? Bush versus Gore: The Florida Recount,” in the journal Economics & Politics. In 2009, the Journal of Accounting, Auditing, and Finance published his article, “Are Earnings Surprises Interpreted More Optimistically on Sunny Days? Accounting Information and the Sunshine Effect.”
When it comes to establishing a connection between earnings reports and the weather, Shon said he wasn’t surprised to find a slight “bump” in earnings, as psychology literature is full of examples of how people tend to commit fewer suicides and tip better when it’s sunny outside.

Not every investor is so easily swayed by outside conditions, though. Shon found that smaller, less sophisticated ones, such as those who make small trades on eTrade, were more likely to be affected by sunnier weather.

“It’s not the sophisticated Warren Buffetts of the world. And even if the less-sophisticated investors do bid up the price of a stock, the magnitude is quite small, like one percent higher than they should be,” he said.

“So if the stock price is $101 instead of $100, in the next two or three days, you find that extra dollar that shouldn’t have been there anyway gets eaten away at, by essentially the smart money.”

Shon’s latest paper, “Temporary R&D Cuts and Meeting-or-Beating Earnings Expectations,” which he co-authored with Meng Yan, Ph.D., assistant professor of accounting and taxation, addresses another curious phenomenon that is often timed to help meet or beat earnings expectations: the cutting of R&D expenditures.

When a company is at risk of falling short of its earnings expectations, it’s not uncommon for it to cut R&D expenses as a means of boosting profits.
“This is preposterous, right? How can you stop the long-term viability of your company just to meet some earnings number? But it has been documented by Fortune 500 CEOs’ comments in surveys,” Shon said.

In the paper, Shon and Yan measure whether a company is merely slashing R&D costs to make up for a short-term fall in profits, or if the cuts are a symptom of a larger problem.

“One of the best ways to predict whether R&D will ramp back up is to look at when [a company]cuts R&D. Did it just meet or beat their earnings expectations? Because if it just met its earning expectations and it [simultaneously]cut R&D, there’s a really good chance that it cut their R&D to meet those expectations.

“Those are the guys that are going to ramp back up,” he said.

Dawn Lerman, Ph.D., executive director of the Fordham Schools of Business’ Center for Positive Marketing, presented Amin with the center’s Cura Personalis in Positive Marketingaward in recognition of his role in Pepsico’s Performance with Purpose campaign, which has focused the firm’s goals on sustainability and healthier food choices.

“Performance with purpose is about building brands that help sustain us as individuals, and as a society. It’s also about reducing the burden put on society by modern ways of production and consumption, through investment in things like biodegradable packaging technology, or reduction of carbon emissions in the production process. And it about doing all of this without compromising on taste,” Lerman said.

In his keynote address, “Performance with Purpose: Creating a Sustainable Business in a Changing World,” Amin detailed three core aspects of Pepsico’s engagement efforts with customers around the world who buy brands like Quaker Oats, Lays and Tropicana.

Engagement needs to be direct, digital and authentic, he said. The last aspect is particularly important.

“You better say what you mean and you better mean what you say,” he said. “You have to deliver against the brand’s promise. Our challenge, as well as our opportunity, lies in our ability to make our campaigns hyperlocal and enormously relevant.”

He pointed to Gatorade as an example of a brand that had briefly lost its focus but has been revived in recent years. While it had once been mislabled as a soft drink, it is now known as an integral part of exercise regimens. Part of the brand’s success is due to a cutting-edge social media operation that Amin said monitors online conversations related to exercise and hydration.

Above all, Amin touted change as an opportunity. Shifting global demographics will, for the first time, see people 17 and younger outnumbered by those 50 and older, he said, and an estimated billion people will soon join the ranks of the middle class in Asia.

“To be part of an era in which global communication is being completely revolutionized is an opportunity that previous generations could only dream of,” he said.

“I don’t think there’s ever been a more exciting time to be in the business or in the marketing field.”

Those challenges were laid out at “Technology Start-Ups in the Bronx: Opportunities and Challenges,” a summit held at the Gabelli School of Business on Oct. 17.

The conference, which was sponsored by the Fordham Schools of Business and the Center for Digital Transformation, brought together leaders in technology, business, education and government, as well as community members and students, to address what the Bronx has—and what it lacks—that technology start-ups need.

Steven D’Agustino, Ph.D, director of Fordham’s RETC Center for Professional Development, laid bare the economic realities that need to be overcome. Approximately 16 percent of Bronx residents live on less than $10,000 a year, 25 percent don’t speak fluent English, and 31 percent over age 25 have not earned a high school diploma.

Health is a problem too. Residents of Morrisania and Highbridge have a 75 percent higher rate of teenage pregnancy than the rest of the city, and the highest percentage of residents who die before age 75.

What the Bronx does have is a plethora of cheap real estate that would be attractive to startups, a location that is 30 minutes away from venture capital located in four of richest counties in the country, five major hospitals, and seven colleges and universities.

Panelists spoke of both nurturing businesses within the Bronx, as well as luring new ones to the borough.

Rogina Coar-Smith, director of procurement and MWBE Programs at the South Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation, talked about partnering with existing small business owners, to help them stay on top of the latest technology trends.

“Technology is the next step to moving everybody into an era of growth, employment, and education,” she said.

Teresita Abay Krueger, an advisory board member of Latin Business Today and director of social media for the Murray Hill Institute, said one of the challenges she and others face is demonstrating to large enterprises what the return on investment (ROI) is when it comes to technology.

“A case in point is retail,” she said. “They were pretty slow for a period of time in departing from their classic brick and mortar store environment to that virtual environment.

“You really have to demonstrate to the folks what is the ROI, and it has to be in dollars and cents.”

When it comes to luring investors to the Bronx, Coar-Smith also called it a public relations issue. Many investors are still stuck with that notion that “The Bronx is burning.”

“We have anchor stores, there are tennis courts, we have parks, all of that is here. Yes, we used to have a crime problem, but if you look at the crime, actually we’re a little bit safer than a lot of the other boroughs.”

Nestor Davidson, a Fordham professor of law, speculated that just one or two success stories from a startup like Etsy or Foursquare could be all it takes to put the Bronx on the map.

“The conditions are so ripe here . . . that if you can overcome that information barrier, and you communicate to people who think in a very different way and are attuned to that spark of what a successful environment is, it can quickly become a virtuous cycle,” he said.

The panel also featured Anjali Kumar, senior counsel, Google Inc. and adjunct professor, Gabelli School of Business, and Charlene Reid, executive director/principal of the Bronx Charter School for Excellence.

That was the message Kathyrn S. Wylde delivered to an audience at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus on Oct. 2.

Wylde, the president and CEO of Partnership for New York City, was the closing speaker for the first Summit on Restoring Trust in Business, a day-long series of talks, workshops and panels organized by the Consortium for Trustworthy Organizations.

Under the leadership of Robert Hurley, Ph.D., professor of management in the Fordham schools of business, the consortium was founded to provide tools and solutions for leaders to build trustworthy organizations. Private sector partners include Cigna, Edelman, Ernst & Young and Towers Watson.

Tuesday’s summit brought together 150 academics and representatives from BASF, GE, IBM, Pfizer, Met Life, Shell Oil, Cigna, Ernst & Young LLP, Edelman, MasterCard, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, and Wharton & Garrison LLP, for candid discussions about trust. Some of the themes participants touched upon were more active listening, engaging with all stakeholders, and moving to a radical transparency in the age of Twitter.

Participants also learned about strategies for solving societal problems at the intersection of business and human needs, such as IBM’s focus on “Building a Smarter Planet,” BASF’s “Chemistry for a Sustainable Future,” Cigna’s “Mission of Human Health and Well-Being” and GE’s “Ecomagination.”

Wylde recalled how she worked in 1981 with the New York City Partnership, which David Rockefeller had founded two years earlier, to help rebuild sections of the city that had devastated by fires and disinvestment.

The idea behind the group, which has since merged with the New York Chamber of Commerce, was to allow business leaders to work more directly with government and other civic groups to address broader social and economic problems in a hands on way.

Residents who’d stayed on while their neighborhoods crumbled were skeptical until she explained that the plan was to build homes on free land, with tax abatements, and have limited profit for the private sector so they would be affordable to the people living in the neighborhoods.

“You could see the light bulbs clicking in their heads. It was no longer ‘David Rockefeller is going to take over our neighborhood.’ It was, ‘David Rockefeller sees value in our neighborhood, and we’re going to have an opportunity to participate in what’s happening here,’” she said.

“That was a great lesson for me, because out of that crisis, David Rockefeller, who was then symbolically the richest man in the city, was able to go into a very poor neighborhoods and develop an alignment of interests, which I think is really the key to restoring corporate trust.”

There are parallels between the fiscal crisis that nearly bankrupted New York City in the 1970’s and the one currently facing the country, Wylde noted.

“We’re about to go into a real fiscal crisis, one way or another, where things are going to change in very dramatic ways. That may be an opportunity for an acceleration in the restoration of corporate trust, because the business community is who everybody has to look to, whether it’s work force development, whether it’s the education system, whether it’s jobs and the financial tools that government will not have at the state, local or federal level,” she said.

“Globalization and technology have been great for big business, but lousy for most regular people in terms of security and where their lives are going. They have not enjoyed the benefits that big business has enjoyed over the last 30 years, and they resent it.”

Wylde suggested philanthropy should be linked directly to efforts to restore trust. Rather than scatter philanthropic efforts all over the place, firms should consider focusing them in a few big areas where they can have significant impact and be much more strategic in where they devote resources.

“Pointing out that global corporations increasingly are solving the problems of cities and countries, and emphasizing that your philanthropy reinforces those business lines, which I think IBM and other corporations have done very well, is very important,” she said.

Ultimately, Wylde said that partnerships between the private enterprise, government and academia will restore trust.  She suggested embracing the notion of competitiveness put forth by Michael E. Porter, Ph.D., the Bishop William Lawrence University Professor at Harvard Business School.

“He says that ‘American competitiveness is the ability of corporations to succeed in the global marketplace while raising the living standards of average Americans,’ and its that last phrase that’s kind of the caveat for how he thinks,” she said.

“Rather than saying we have to get taxes right to be competitive or we have to get the regulatory environment to be competitive, we also have to get right that the workers and the employees are part of the benefit of being a more competitive nation. Not just that they’re better workers and more productive, but that all boats rise.”

Hurley echoed the notion that business has its work cut out for it, and expressed hope that Fordham could be part of the solution.

“There are some clear paths forward: measurement, engagement, agile leadership, transparency, and I think we can actually move the needle on these things,” he said. “It’s not going to happen in the short term, but that’s the kind of work that the consortium wants to do going forward.”

The Consortium for Trustworthy Organizations will kick off with a conference organized in conjunction with The Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics:

Summit on Restoring Trust in Business
Tuesday, Oct. 2, 2012
8 a.m. to 7 p.m.
12th Floor Lounge, Lincoln Center Campus, 113 W. 60th St., New York, N.Y.

The conference will shine a global spotlight on the need to find workable solutions to the ongoing crisis in corporate trust.

The conference has support from a growing list of industry and business partners, including co-sponsors Cigna, Edelman, Ernst & Young LLP, and Towers Watson.

“We are now more than a decade post-Enron, and each day there is a new headline about a violation of trust,” said Robert Hurley, Ph.D., professor of management at Fordham and summit organizer.

“It is time that businesses and those that educate business people recognize that when surveys show that less than 15 percent of the public trusts business, we have a problem that requires action.”

The conference welcomes a roster of speakers from global companies, including GE, IBM, Cigna, Edelman, Ernst & Young, LLP, Towers Watson, The Business Roundtable Institute on Corporate Ethics, and The Rand Institute. It will feature faculty experts from Fordham, Columbia, Duke, Coventry, Queensland, and Singapore Universities.

Attendees will participate in plenary sessions and discussion tracks on trustworthy leadership, repairing trust, building trust through stakeholder communication, regulating distrust, and creating an ethical corporate culture.
For registration information visit www.trustinorganizations.com.