POSCO’s Journey: Building Employee Trust Through Communication

This case focuses on POSCO, the world’s most profitable steelmaker and third largest steelmaker by volume for crude steel production. When Jung Jun-Yang became POSCO chief executive in 2009, he envisioned trust to be the foundation of POSCO’s success in achieving sustainable co-prosperity with its stakeholders. Believing that “trust is POSCO’s identity” and “trust is based on communication,” he launched the ‘trust communication’ initiative in 2010. This initiative coincided with the start of POSCO’s third phase of growth for 2010-2020 decade. For this phase, the company aims to become a truly sustainable corporation. The case describes the trust-related challenges that Jung faces as he launches the initiative. In addition, it shows some preliminary results from the company’s nascent initiative and the problems that continue to confront POSCO’s management as the company strives to achieve long-term sustainability through a system focused on ‘Great Harmony’, which is based on trust and communication.

The case illustrates the importance of employee trust and the role that internal communication can play to foster it within an organisation. It explains why the communication of core values can help companies achieve their strategic objectives. Students will learn that a solution for improving employees’ overall perception of company culture could include a managerial performance system that rewards valued communication behaviours; offers communication skills and trust leadership training for managers; and uses departmental communication facilitators.

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