Can the Study of Love Help Business Build More Trusting Relationships with Society?

The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of love and how it may be applied to help business build more trusting relationships with society. We explore the concept of love in three ways: first, as a positive emotional state that is associated with many pro-social benefits.

Second, we explore how love can be differentiated from other positive emotions. Lastly, we offer a definition of love that we believe can be applied by business to build trust relationships with multiple stakeholders, starting with employees and extending this to other stakeholders, such as customers, suppliers and communities.

Keywords: trust, business and society, love