Tag: Edelman Trust Barometer

Edelman Trust Barometer depicts business as a trusted, potentially stabilizing, force

Are there any institutions that we trust? According to an article from Edelman, which has just published the firm’s 23rd annual trust and credibility survey, while, as a society, we are still polarized and deeply distrustful, business was viewed as “the only trusted institution” at 62%. It’s sure not the ‘60s anymore! As the article recognizes, “[s]ome might have a hard time believing that today’s corporate leaders now stand as a stabilizing power in a fragile world.”   As detailed in the new 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer, “business is now the sole institution seen as competent and ethical; government is viewed as unethical and incompetent. Business is under pressure to step into the void left by government.” From 2020 to 2023, international survey participants increased the ethics grade for business by 19 points. Edelman attributes the stunning increase to business’s response “to the social and economic consequences of COVID-19 and Russia’s attack on Ukraine—among other pressing issues,” during which many “corporate leaders put self-interest aside.” In the survey, government and media were viewed as neither competent nor ethical, driving a “cycle of distrust” as “sources of “misleading information,” particularly social media.  To what does the barometer attribute these poor outcomes? In large part, to a sense of entrenched division and polarization that both arises out of a loss of faith in institutions and also generates it. Economic anxiety and income inequality are also seen as major forces in fueling polarization.  “Given the unsettled state of the world,” Edelman asks, “can business remain a stabilizing force”?