NEW YORK—Best practices in ethical communications and building trustworthy organizations will be the major themes of two conferences taking place in New York next month.

The Ethisphere Institute, which annually selects the World’s Most Ethical Companies, will host the second-annual Best Practices in Ethics Communications Workshop at the New York Stock Exchange on October 24. The Consortium For Trustworthy Organizations at Fordham University will hold its second annual “Building The Trustworthy Organization” on October 25 at the University’s Lincoln Center campus.

The ethics communications workshop will feature expert commentary from industry leaders combined with interactive discussion among all workshop participants focused on key business issues and best practice sharing. The event aims to bring together communications, legal and compliance senior executives as well as leaders from human resources, information technology, and various staff and operational areas.

Paul Argenti, professor of corporate communication and corporate responsibility at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, will deliver a keynote address. Other highlights include an expert panel featuring Dana Perino, former White House press secretary, and Holly Gregory, partner at Weil Gotshal & Manges; and a presentation by Gary Sheffer, vice president of communications and public affairs for General Electric and the next chairman of the Arthur W. Page Society, along with Roger Bolton, president of the Arthur W. Page Society.

The Fordham conference will shine a spotlight on how building trustworthy organizations can lead to competitive advantage and reputational excellence and will feature 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; and Wyndham Worldwide.

“The erosion of trust in many of our major institutions has been consistent and is now at alarming levels,” says Robert Hurley, professor and director of The Consortium For Trustworthy Organizations. “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. 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.”