Falling public trust of corporations

I came across a really good bit of research the other day courtesy of The Work Foundation.

The research paper - Papering Over the Cracks? – Rules, Regulation and Real Trust - looks at how "short-term regulatory attempts to repair trust in business will over the longer term undermine the true basis of trust." In other words, business leaders in particular are suffering from a lack of trust. The image that comes with this post looks at the public perceptions of range of professions including that of business leaders.

For instance, the proportion of the population who ‘generally believe company directors can be trusted to tell the truth’ is 30 per cent, below trade unionists (39 per cent) or civil servants (51 per cent)!

It appears that writers of paper (Ed Smith and Richard Reeves) believe the remedy for diminishing public faith in big corportaions is as follows:

"Unless business leaders put integrity at the centre of their role to ensure that their organisations instinctively do the right thing, then the current climate of suspicion will harden into deep-seated mistrust. We are at a critical moment; it remains to be seen whether business leaders will seize it."

I don't believe this enough and sense that businesses are becoming increasingly the judge and jury of their own destiny. I believe more joint regulation of business is required even if most business leaders are capable of following these suggestions.

2 comments:

Viagra Online said...

It's incredible that Government ministers, Politicians, and journalists are the ones who don't tell the truth, this is embarrassing.

Swamp Ass said...

Unfortunately in today's corporate world, greed for profit has pretty much established itself as the number one priority of corporations. It is so scary that established brands even favor quantity over quality and failing support further triggers the consumers trust. Unbelievably sad, but true.