Research

The Evolution of Trust: Insights from a Pioneer

March 13, 2024 by admin

Professor Roger Mayer discusses in this episode of the TrustTalk podcast his foundational 1995 article on trust, “An Integrative Model of Organizational Trust“, written with James H. Davis and F. David Schoorman, emphasizing the role of trust in risk-taking within professional settings. He reflects on the evolution of his model, which defines trust as the willingness to make oneself vulnerable to another entity (be it a person, group, or technology) without having the ability to directly control or monitor their actions, distinguishing it from trustworthiness.

Mayer responds to criticisms by underscoring the intentional simplicity and broad relevance of his trust model, which was designed with minimal variables for wide applicability, including unexpected fields like AI and robotics. He acknowledges the trade-offs of this approach but values the model’s capacity to spark debate and advance scientific discourse.

He also previews his upcoming book, “A Research Agenda for Trust: Interdisciplinary Perspectives,” aiming to facilitate interdisciplinary research in trust. Additionally, Mayer explores trust in autonomous technology, distinguishing between trust in the technology itself and its creators. He revisits his 1995 trust model in the context of government trust, introducing a new measure assessing vulnerability.

Mayer discusses the less-discussed aspect of how police perceive their trust in the public, highlighting the need for mutual trust. He reveals that police are more likely to take risks when they have greater trust in the community, a perspective that shifts the usual focus from public trust in the police to the reciprocal

Mayer concludes by discussing the practical application of trust research and challenges for future generations in bridging theory and practice.

Difference between trust and trustworthiness

I think that this speaks to the importance of differentiating trust and trustworthiness and its dimensions. What we found was that by coming up with a measure where each of the items was asking a person how willing to be vulnerable to the government are you, and each item in the questionnaire spoke directly to that issue. We were able to come up with a measure that was significantly more correlated with a number of the other topics, or variables that you would expect trust in the government to be related to. In particular, out of six of them that are commonly used in that literature, there were two of them that our measure was no better and no worse, but out of the six of them our measure did a significantly better job of correlating with them, or they were correlated significantly more highly with things like, if the government recommended that there’s a storm coming, you better evacuate, our measure was better at predicting the response on that. If the government recommends that you should get a vaccination, which is another controversial issue, if they recommend that you get a vaccination, are you likely to do it?

Trustworthiness, Ability, Benevolence Integrity

There are three characteristics, sometimes appearing by various names, to be qualities of another party that seemed to warrant thinking of that party as trustworthy: ability, benevolence, and integrity or “ABI”.

Mayer et al.’s (1995) theory states that the three main issues about a trustee that lead to a higher assessment of that party’s trustworthiness are ability, benevolence, and integrity, often abbreviated as ABI. Ability addresses the issue of whether the trustee can deliver what is needed in the context of the relationship at hand: is it capable of achieving the desired objectives? Benevolence addresses the question to what extent the trustee will seek to protect the interests of the trustor. Integrity addresses the question of how closely the trustee follows a set of values the trustor finds acceptable.

Or read what Roger and Barbara Mayer write in the first chapter of the new book they edited, called “Towards interdisciplinary scholarship in trust: the needs, some leads, and a seed”:

Ability is an assessment that the party can accomplish what is needed from them in the situation. For a supervisor to be trustworthy, this often includes such issues as knowledge of the process that needs to be completed, and influence within the organization to allow influence for the trustor (i.e., employee of the supervisor) to be recognized and promoted within the organization. The capacity to accomplish whatever the trustor deems is needed from a party in the role in question is included in the trustor’s view of ability.

Benevolence captures the relationship the trustor (i.e., trusting party) perceives with the trustee (i.e., to be trusted party). Does the trustee really care about what is important to the trustor? Does the trustee want good things for the trustor? This is easiest to understand as being the trustor’s perception that the trustee cares for the best interests of the trustor as an individual.

Integrity is the perception that the trustee will behave according to principles that the trustor finds acceptable. The principles may differ from the trustor’s in some ways, but must align well enough to be palatable to the trustor. A judgment of high integrity involves not only a trustee espousing an acceptable set of values, but also following those values consistently. Either espousing an unacceptable set of values (e.g., “winner take all, I will crush you if I can” may well not be acceptable to the trustor) or failing to follow accepted values consistently (e.g., “we are all a team and are in this together,” then behaving in a self-serving way that hurts other team members) will damage the perception of the trustee’s integrity

The 1995 paper “An Integrative Model of Organizational Trust”

The 1995 paper laid out a theory of trust, trustworthiness, risk, and risk-related outcomes. The paper has been cited over 3,000 times. It is the basis of much of the trust research in the organization sciences, and its use has spread to several unrelated fields like medicine, technology, AI and robotics.

Trust in the Federal Government

In the article “Understanding the psychological nature and mechanisms of political trust” he wrote with Joseph A. Hamm and Corwin Smidt, the authors looked at trust in the federal government. They found that the 1995 model applies to this relationship. They developed a measure of trust in the government looking at it as a willingness to be vulnerable that did a better job of predicting the correlates of trust than did the ANES measure which has been the gold standard in political science research for decades (Listen to the part of the interview where Roger Mayer talks about this.

Trust by the police in the public

In the interview, Roger Mayer talks about his research into the police trusting the public. The article “The Overlooked Perspective of Police Trust in the Public: Measurement and Effects on Police Job Behaviors” he wrote with Scott M. Mourtgos, Richard A. Wise and Holly O’Rourke, looks at a different perspective in the police-public trust relationship. Most media and research look at how much the public trusts the police (or not). This work focuses on police trust in the public. The authors found that police who trust the public more take more personal risks in doing their jobs. Especially given the reciprocal nature of trust, this study has important new implications on how to build trust in the police-public relationship.

Transcript of the interview with Roger Mayer

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The Impact of Perceived Justice on Societal Trust

February 21, 2024 by admin

Research, Science

Authority and Trust Dynamics, distrust, polarization, procedural justice

Kees van den Bos, Professor of Social and Behavioural Sciences at Utrecht University and author of the book “The Fair Process Effect,” explains his extensive research on societal conflicts and the pivotal role of trust. Through his book he underscores the critical importance of fair treatment by authorities in nurturing trust and cooperation within society. He introduces the “Perceived Procedural Justice Scale,” designed to quantitatively assess fairness, highlighting how fairness is integral to fostering a sense of belonging and respectful treatment among community members.

Van den Bos’s research goes further to explore the detrimental effects that perceived unfairness can have, such as fostering distrust and societal polarization. He provides a comprehensive perspective on these issues, emphasizing the need for early intervention in societal conflicts. By advising authorities and citizens to remain vigilant to societal dynamics, recognize and validate the concerns of various community members, and ensure these concerns are met with understanding and appreciation, he offers a pathway towards mitigating these negative impacts.

Moreover, Van den Bos stresses the importance of adopting normative standpoints that reinforce democratic values, including peaceful and respectful treatment of one another and the maintenance of the rule of law. He acknowledges the imperfections in societal institutions, such as the legal system, but advocates for continuous efforts to enhance their functioning. This balanced approach is crucial for maintaining the fabric of a democratic society, even if it means accepting some losses as the cost of upholding fundamental values. Through this lens, Van den Bos provides a logical and informative framework for addressing and preventing the issues of distrust, polarization, and conspiracy thinking that can arise from perceived unfairness.

Book details

The book “The Fair Process Effect, Overcoming Distrust, Polarization, and Conspiracy Thinking”

Publisher: ‎ Cambridge University Press
Lnguage : ‎ Enghlish
Paperback: ‎ 174 pagina’s
ISBN-10 : ‎ 1009219006
ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1009219006

The book will soon be available in Dutch as well.

Transcript Interview Kees van den Bos

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How Leaders Create High-Trust Organizations

January 10, 2024 by admin

Management, Research

Our guest on episode 84 of our podcast is Bob Hurley, Professor Leading People and Organizations at Gabelli School of Business at Fordham University (New York), who talks about his theory of organizational capacity for trustworthiness, highlighting Unilever’s approach to genetically modified foods, Bob Moore’s employee ownership plan at Bob’s Red Mill and how external pressures shape organizational adaptations, using examples like the global financial crisis and Mattel’s product safety issues. He reviews BAE Systems’ response to a bribery scandal and Salesforce’s stakeholder engagement, emphasizing the importance of robust governance and competence in building trust. His comprehensive analysis offers insights into business ethics, leadership, the importance of governance, and organizational behavior, focusing on the core aspects of trust in today’s business environment. Hurley stresses the balance between short-term responses and long-term trust-building strategies, emphasizing the role of competent leadership in fostering a trustworthy organizational environment. This comprehensive discussion offers valuable insights into the evolution and management of trust in complex corporate settings.

Stakeholder trust, trustworthiness

So let’s define trust and stakeholders trust. I define trust and this includes stakeholder trust, as confident reliance on an organization when there is uncertainty and risk. Now the whole notion of stakeholder trust is stakeholders read signals in a relationship. When they see that the behavior of the other party, whether it’s a company or a person, meets or exceeds their basic expectations, it’s trust inducing. On the other hand, when they see signals that a company is violating certain basic expectations of fairness and honesty and competence versus negligence, when they see a company violating those expectations, it decreases their trust. Now, it’s important to make a distinction between trust and trustworthiness. Trustworthiness are the signs that I want to see to determine whether I trust you. And the research shows that there’s three basic categories of things we want to see expectations, ability, benevolence, and integrity.

Organizational Capacity for Trustworthiness

So I created this theory around an organizational capacity for trustworthiness. And it’s an evolutionary theory, meaning just like I described the evolution of the universal banks, what I’m looking at is how do companies evolve over time to create bundles of routines that can enable them to be trustworthy or not? So it’s really more an evolutionary theory of the firm. If you go back to Nelson and Winter and Cyert and March, Cyert and March in 1963 wrote a hugely influential book called “The Behavioral Theory of the Firm”. (…). They basically said, hey, organizations are bundles of routines that are built up by coalitions of people arguing, bargaining and fighting, and they achieve some state of the system that enables them to do certain things. And that’s what this organizational capacity of trustworthiness argues, is that organizations evolve to be more or less trustworthy.

Unilever: an example

A bunch of companies that have begun to figure out how to manage this complex landscape, and Unilever was an early one. They’ve been big on sustainability, but just let’s just take an example of what they did with genetically modified foods. They realized very early on this was a huge issue. Not only was it a huge issue, but it involved lots of stakeholders, it involved consumers who were going to put these foods into their bodies. It involved farmers who were going to produce those foods. It involves scientists who were doing research about these foods. It involved regulators. So instead of politically manipulating and managing these stakeholders and then doing what was in their interests profit-wise, they said, let’s engage with these different stakeholders and let’s have a robust dialogue, let’s learn from them. And now this process took years. You can imagine how complicated this is. You got a task force that’s going to the scientific community, to that conference and then to regulators, and then you’re bringing them together and all the while you’re trying to say, how do we create a way forward that respects all these different stakeholders?

Publication

The title of the podcast is drawn from the book: “The Decision to Trust: How Leaders Creat High-Trust Organisations. In the podcast interview he follows what he already wrote in his book, where he emphasizes the crucial role of trust in effectively managing organizations. He points out that top-performing, world-class companies typically foster high levels of trust. In contrast, a lack of trust can hinder an organization’s ability to attract and retain the best talent. Recent years have seen a diminishing trust in government, big businesses, and large institutions, leading to widespread cynicism.

This trend poses significant challenges for organizations, including charities. Hurley introduces the Decision to Trust Model, which outlines ten key factors such as risk tolerance, situational security, predictability, and communication. These elements help managers understand the dynamics of trust within their teams, identifying whether trust levels are high or low and pinpointing areas needing improvement. For managers, the journey to building trust starts with being trustworthy themselves and expecting the same from their team members. Questions to reflect upon include: Are you honest in your communication? Do you show genuine concern for others? Do your team members believe you will act rightly? Establishing trust begins with the individual – get this foundation right, and the rest will naturally follow.

Transcript Interview Bob Hurley

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Interview with subtitles on the TrustTalk YouTube Channel

Trust Dynamics: Competence, Distrust and Generalized Trust

November 9, 2023 by admin

Research

benevolence, competence, distrust, IDEO, value incongruence

Our guest for episode 80 is Sim Sitkin, a Professor at Duke University at Durham, N.C. He explores the dynamics between trust and distrust, highlighting their distinct natures and the challenges involved in navigating these complex emotional states. He uncovers the nuances of how trust can vary incrementally across different domains, and contrasts this with the pervasive and often unyielding nature of distrust.

Trust and distrust exist on a continuum, but they operate differently. Trust can increase or decrease smoothly and incrementally, varying by domain – you might trust someone in one aspect but not in another. Distrust, however, is a distinct, pervasive perception. It’s not just low trust; it represents a complete write-off of someone or an institution. When you distrust, you likely view all actions and intentions negatively, often suspecting ulterior motives. Unlike trust, which can vary in degree, distrust acts like a deep basin at the bottom of the trust continuum. Once in the realm of distrust, it’s very challenging to move out of it, making it qualitatively different from simply having low trust. A key trigger for distrust is the perception of value incongruence. When someone perceives another’s values or worldview as fundamentally different from their own, it can lead to distrust. While having congruent values can enhance trust, moderate disagreements in values might only slightly reduce trust. However, when there are deep and significant value discrepancies, it shifts the situation into the realm of distrust.

Project for a Dutch Court

In a study involving a Dutch court, Sim Sitkin, along with Antoinette Weibel and Katinka Bijlsma-Frankema, investigated the distrust between court administrators and legal professionals. The administrators prioritized operational efficiency, while the judicial side focused on the practice of law, even if inefficient. This value incongruence led to a breakdown in communication and distrust. Sitkin and his colleagues’ findings suggest that addressing distrust isn’t the same as building trust. While competence, benevolence, and integrity are key to building trust, they are not as effective in resolving distrust. Instead, overcoming distrust requires finding and emphasizing shared values and perspectives. This involves increasing interaction and focusing on similarities rather than differences. In the court case, once the parties recognized their shared values and increased their interactions, they began to rebuild trust. This approach suggests that perceived fundamental differences might not be as insurmountable as initially thought and that focusing on common ground can be a crucial step in overcoming distrust.

Are competence, benevolence, and integrity equally important when it comes to building trust?

In discussing the importance of competence, benevolence, and integrity in building trust, Sim Sitkin challenges the view that they are equally important. Sitkin’s work suggests that while competence is important, it becomes relevant only after establishing a relational connection, where benevolence is crucial. Benevolence, or the perception that someone genuinely cares about your welfare, is essential for trust. Competence matters, but its positive impact is contingent on the presence of benevolence. For instance, in the case of a political rival or enemy, increased competence won’t foster trust if there’s no benevolence. In fact, without benevolence, higher competence could be viewed negatively rather than positively.

We found things like competence are important once you’ve established certain kinds of relational connections with the person, that’s where benevolence comes in. So I would argue that for trust, benevolence is essential, competence is helpful. And the example I like to use is imagine you have a political rival or even an enemy, will you trust them more because they’re more competent, even though there is not a shred of benevolence between you, you first want to know that someone actually cares about your welfare. Then you’re going to be more open to them. Once you know they care about your welfare, then you do want them to be competent, that’s going to matter, because I’m not going to rely on you the same way if you’re not competent. But benevolence can make higher competence a negative factor rather than a positive factor.

The company IDEO and bureaucracy and organizational culture

Sitkin highlights the importance of bureaucracy and organizational culture as positive forces when well executed. A key example is the design firm Ideo. Despite its emphasis on creativity, Ideo employs a mix of formal and informal controls that are respected by its staff. These controls are recognized as tools for facilitating shared goals and processes, rather than as constraints. This respect is partly because the administrators themselves are creative individuals who share the same values as their staff. The Ideo case illustrates that when control systems are perceived as being aligned with collective goals and values, they enhance trust rather than undermine it.

Similarly with culture, the informal controls of culture solve a lot of problems when they’re done well and when they’re well designed. But certainly there are cases we can all think of where they don’t work well. One of my favorite examples of this is the product design company Ideo, it’s considered one of the most creative, innovative companies in the world, they hire people who are these wild and crazy creative types, yet when they solve problems, they also have a procedure where the phrase that was used is the self-appointed adults come in and say, okay, we’ve got to stop what we were doing, we’re going to shift, and we’re going to do this instead. Now, why does that work? Why wouldn’t the creative types just rebel and distrust the motives of the administrators? The answer is the administrators are also creative types. They know they share the values whenever they’re not wearing that hat of being the I’m the adult in the room, they’re right in there being creative and wild and crazy, and the people they know the systems were put in place, whether they’re formal controls or informal controls, and they have both, they’re put in place to facilitate what we all think is most important, both in our process, in the way we do things and what our goals are.

General Field Theory

Sim Sitkin, in collaboration with Chris Long, Audrey Korsgaard, and Tony Cohn, hopes to develop a general field theory that integrates the somewhat isolated research areas of distrust, trust, and generalized trust. This theory aims to explore the similarities and differences between these concepts and to understand the factors that lead to generalized trust or distrust, as well as remedies for moving out of these states.

Transcript Interview Sim Sitkin

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Interview transcript in Dutch (Nederlandse tekst)

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Unveiling Online Trust: Insights from Pew on Modern Challenges

August 8, 2023 by admin

General, Internet, Research, Surveys

echo chambers, institutions, online trust, surveys

Welcome to a episode 74 of the TrustTalk podcast where we delve into a discussion centered around the intricate dynamics of trust in institutions. At the heart of this dialogue lies the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan fact tank renowned for its commitment to enlightening the public about the prevailing issues, attitudes, and transformative trends that shape our world. Through an array of methodologies such as public opinion polling, demographic exploration, content analysis, and comprehensive data-driven social science research, Pew empowers individuals with valuable insights. Notably, Pew remains steadfastly impartial, refraining from adopting any policy stances.

A focal point of Pew’s ongoing endeavors involves the meticulous assessment of trust levels within various institutions. As we unravel in this new episode, we have the privilege of hosting a distinguished guest, Lee Rainie. A former Director of Internet and Technology Research at Pew, Lee Rainie will guide us through the research undertaken by Pew on institutional trust levels.

Pew Trust Magazine

The 2020 article in Pew Trust Magazine (“How Americans View Trust, Facts, and Democracy Today”) can be found here.

Lee about trusting government institutions

As Americans see it, they see a vicious circle rather than a virtuous circle unfolding. So they’re watching their government and they’re watching their fellow citizens and they see more and more evidence that the government institutions are not performing well, that business institutions are not performing well or churches are not performing well or media organizations are not performing well. And so that fuels their suspicions and concerns about trusting these institutions. At the same time, there are other things going on above and beyond what’s going on online that drive some of these feelings. As I say, the rise of polarization and all of its attendant pieces is a major part of why people are less trusting of each other than they used to be. There’s a sense now that politics is a blood sport. It’s not just argument over policy, it’s an argument about who is evil and who is good. Whether right will prevail or wrong will prevail. So there’s this sense that the people on the other side are not necessarily just policy opponents or partisan or political opponents. There are bad people who, if they take over, are going to make life worse. So the stakes feel higher.

Transcript of the interview with Lee Rainie

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YouTube video with interview and subtitles

For those that like to read the subtitles while listening to the interview, TrustTalk’s YouTube channel provides a video of all interviews, below the one with Lee Rainie.

https://youtu.be/rDaEKCy7iX4

National Identity, Partisan Polarization and Trust

June 14, 2023 by admin

Politics, Research, Science

generelized trust, polarization, social trust

Eric Uslaner is the guest for episode 71 of TrustTalk. He is Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland-College Park, where he has taught since 1975. In 1997-1998 he was Distinguished University Research Fellow at the University of Maryland and in 1981-82 he was a Fulbright Lecturer and Visiting Professor, the Departments of American Studies and Political Science, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. Professor Uslaner received his B.A. from Brandeis University cum laude with Honors in Politics in 1968 and his M.A. (1970) and Ph.D. (1973) in Political Science from Indiana University. In 2006 he was appointed the first Senior Research Fellow at the Center for American Law and Political Science at the Southwest University of Political Science and Law, Chongqing, China. In the fall of 2010, he was the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in American Political Science at the School o f Politics and International Relations at the Australian National University. He is also an Honorary Professor of Political Science and Government at Aarhus University (Denmark).

Little is known about the relationship between perceived polarization and social trust, including whether that relationship is causal. Social trust (trust in people in general) and political trust (trust in political leaders and institutions) are different kinds of trust with different antecedents. For instance, trust in government is heavily shaped by evaluations of government performance and whether or not one supports the party-in-power (Citrin, 1974), and it is not the same as how much one trusts other people (Newton, 2001). While social and political trust tend to move in tandem at the macro level (Keele, 2007), the empirical evidence on the individual level is inconclusive; if anything, it weighs more heavily for a weak association between the two (Uslaner, 2002; Delhey & Newton, 2003; Kaase, 1999; see Brehm & Rahn, 1997 for an exception).

Prolific writer

Eric Uslaner wrote various books on trust:

Generalized Trust

(…) the basic idea of the moral foundations of trust is that it makes more sense for people to accept people who are different from themselves as part of their same community. An alternative view of trust is that you always have to wait to see how another person reacts. And while that is true on an individual basis, overall, if you maintain a skeptical view of other people, you’re not going to be able to function very well in the world. You have to be able to accept people of all backgrounds who are different from yourself. And that’s the fundamental idea behind my notion of the moral foundations of trust. Generalized trust.”

Transcript of Interview Eric Uslaner

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Measuring Trust

February 10, 2023 by admin

Research

behavorial science, Deloitte, edelman, KPMG, OECD Guidelines, Pew, political science, PxC, sociology, survey, trust

Despite decades of research into trust measuring individual trust remains unsatisfying due to problematic survey questions that are used to measure social trust. There are two main methods used to measure trust, surveys and behavior observation. Surveys ask for people’s judgments about trust, while behavior observation looks at behaviors based on trust. The trust game is an example of the latter, where trust is measured by the amount of money sent from the trustor to the trustee and how both parties behave.

TrustTalk podcast host Severin de Wit talked about that with Paul C. Bauer, a Fellow at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research for this 62nd episode of the TrustTalk podcast. He wrote his Ph.D. (“Three Essays on the Concept of Trust and its Foundations“) on trust and is currently involved in innovative, audio-driven trust measurement.

Trust reports by major consultancies and non-alignment

He suggests that non-alignment between the many surveys by organizations like Edelman, Pew Research Center, and major consultancies like Deloitte, PwC, EY and KPMG may be due to different survey questions, different time points for data collection, and different samples. The OECD Guidelines on measuring trust are helpful but could be updated with more recent knowledge. He believes that even though trust is emotional and subjective, it should still be quantified, and mentions his research on audio responses to measure trust. He also points out that definitions of trust are often detached from measurements of trust and discusses his work on finding a better fit between the definition and measurement of trust.

(…) we simply learned over time that the questions we use are to some extent problematic. So, for instance, the most popular survey question that we use to measure social trust goes along the lines: “Do you think that most people can be trusted or that you can’t be careful enough in dealing with people?” And this question contains concepts such as most people, And by now we know that people might interpret this question differently. This is a measurement problem, and we find such measurement problems across different trust survey questions.

Behavioral Trust

(…) So, for instance, I could do an interview with you because I trust you, and in sociology and political science, the most common method to measure trust is to ask people for their judgments in surveys. So we could ask them: “Do you trust your family? Do you trust your neighbours?” and the infamous generalized social trust question that I just mentioned is, for instance, “do you think that most people can be trusted or that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people?”. That’s one way, basically directly asking for these judgments. And besides that, we can also observe the behaviour and then conclude that certain behaviours we observe should be based on a high level of trust. So, for instance, I could observe a friend lending money to another person, and then I would assume that she trusts this other person because I’ve observed this behaviour and there’s actually a large literature that attempts to measure what trust researchers call “behaviourally exhibited trust”, in other words, behaviour that is based on trust.

Transcript of Interview Paul Bauer

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YouTube -interview with English subtitles

Contact Paul C. Bauer on Twitter

Want to contact Paul Bauer or follow him on Twitter (@p_c_bauer)

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Gen Z & Trust

November 30, 2022 by admin

Lifestyle, Research

GenZ, Glocalities, political engagement, Trends, youth

In episode 56 of our podcast, Martijn Lampert, co-founder and research director at Glocalities, a values-based international research and marketing insights organization, reflects upon the findings of the new Trend Study (“Values Trends Shaping the World in 2022“), based upon interviews of 300,000 people stretching over 20 countries and spanning 8 years since the start in 2014. Glocalities provides global insights based on researching values, lifestyles, and psychology Social research is all about curiosity and the desire to understand the world, society, and the motivational drivers behind the behavior of people.

Gen Z is more activist and at the same time less optimistic and disenfranchised about their future, they have diminishing trust in meeting sustainability goals, and their prospect to flourish as well as to make a political impact. Half of the world’s population is aged below 30, but only 2.6% of the world’s parliamentarians are under 30. The young generation is the highest educated generation ever in human history. They have higher levels of trust in education and science, they are the most connected generations ever through the internet, and at the same time are emancipating and increasingly looking for purpose and quality of life.

Gen Z trends

Martijn Lampert highlights a few trends involving GenZ (the generation aged between 14 and 23):

(…) One of the main trends is that young people globally increasingly feel alienated and let down by society more pessimistic about the future, partly as an effect of the COVID crisis and the isolation which has also led to mental health issues, but partly also because we live in a time of poly crisis and climate anxieties are also on the rise, mainly amongst the young generation. Almost half of the world’s Gen Z say that. I think that the future holds nothing for me, and this has gone up. This has various effects, so youth increasingly feel disenfranchised. One of the main findings is that in emerging markets where nine out of ten young people live that are generally also more authoritarian and more conservative in their values, youth are increasingly emancipating, and this is to the extreme visible in a country like Iran, where young people are violently repressed by the theocratic regime. But we see it also happening in Russia.

GenZ politically underrepresented

Gen Z, although making up almost 1/3 of the world population is under-represented in parliaments:

(…) political interest is on the rise, but not necessarily to the highest level amongst the young generation. And that is interesting because also the older generation, they show a larger rise in political interest. There is a clear disconnect, and this is related very much to the trust crisis between the political system and the young generation. Half of the world population is aged below 30. Only 2.6% of the world’s parliamentarians are under 30. And nine out of ten youth come from these emerging countries.

Conservatism, emancipation in emerging markets

Martijn reflects on the trend to more emancipation of youth in emerging markets:

One of the main findings is that in emerging markets where nine out of ten young people live that are generally also more authoritarian and more conservative in their values, youth are increasingly emancipating, and this is to the extreme visible in a country like Iran, where young people are violently repressed by the theocratic regime. But we see it also happening in Russia. To give an example, in 2014, 66% of young adults in Russia, 18 to 24 years old, said the father should be the head of the household. It’s a conservative country, a conservative statement. But this is going down because now it’s at 50%.

Transcript Interview Martijn Lampert

Here is the English transcript of the interview (French and German transcripts are available upon request):

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Interorganizational trust

November 10, 2022 by admin

Literature, Management, Research

blind trust, definition of trust, financial crisis, horizontal organisations, interpersonal trust, joint venture, M&A, sociology, Supply Chains, vertical organizations

As the ultimate expert on the role of trust between organizations, Professor Reinhard Bachmann talks about the importance of risk and vulnerability: you do not need to trust if you are not vulnerable, nor if you want to avoid any kind of risk. What role play competence and integrity?

In this new episode of the TrustTalk podcast, he speaks about his research into the role of trust and power in two types of inter-organizational relationships, vertical relations (supply chain) and horizontal relations (M&A, joint venture, cooperations) the “system” or “institutional” trust in liberal capitalist countries (like in the UK) versus coordinated capitalist countries (like in Continental Europe).

In the case of acquisition transactions, two organizations need to be integrated, it is not uncommon that one side distrusts the other (job loss, uncertainty) and why is it that many M&A transactions or joint ventures fail, due to lack of trust? In organizational trust you need to see real persons who represent an organization: if it is an abstract organization and you would not associate any human face with it, it is very difficult to trust.

Too much trust is dangerous too: the global financial crisis of 2008 was for a part caused by too much trust in financial advisers (“blind trust”).

He reflects upon organizations that say they do not need trust because they can control and monitor operations more closely by technical means (surveillance, video, etc), wondering whether trust becomes obsolete (he thinks it is not).

On the definition of trust

(…) a trustor always makes positive assumptions about the future behaviour of the trustee. So I think these are common themes that run through all kinds of definitions of trust. Also, we work on the basis of limited knowledge. So if you know everything you don’t need to trust, if you know nothing then is also stupid to trust.

Competence, Integrity and Benevolence

we come to issues such as competence, but also integrity, which is a big difference. So you can trust someone on the basis of competence. You trust someone that he or she is competent enough to fulfil a certain promise, or you focus on integrity so someone can completely fulfil your criteria of integrity but is incompetent. So if that’s the case, then it’s a different situation with regard to trust, then, if that is the other way round. Someone can be very competent, but basically a crook and not trustworthy. And there are other people who would also add a third dimension, which is benevolence, so this is well established. The main difference here is really competence versus integrity.

Trust and why many M&A transactions fail

Surprisingly, a majority of acquisitions does not work very well. And one of the things is that there is a lack of trust from both sides and there are misunderstandings, there’s a problem of integrating different corporate cultures

Organizational trust and the need for a human face

when we talk about organizational trust and we think about trust in an organization, then it seems to be essential that sometimes you need to see, as Anthony Giddens has said in one of his famous writings on modernity and trust into the whites of eyes of people. So you have to have access points to the organizations, and that needs to be persons. Sometimes you have to see real persons who represent the organization. So if it’s just an abstract organization and you would not associate any human face with it, it would be very difficult to trust it for many people.

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Edelman’s Trust Research

August 30, 2022 by admin

Communications, Research

edelman, Edelman Trust Barometer, GenZ, government, Infodemic, media, stakeholder

In this 50th interview (and 51st episode) for TrustTalk, we talk with Tonia Ries, Executive Director of Global Thought Leadership, the Edelman Trust Institute, New York. For more than 20 years Edelman has been publishing the Edelman Trust Barometer on the status of trust in four institutions: business, government, NGOs, and media.

Tonia talks about GenZ and their predilection for employment values and societal roles of their employers, spreading their influence on Western culture and views on the role of trust. Recent trust research shows an epidemic of misinformation and widespread mistrust of societal institutions and leaders around the world, a failing trust ecosystem unable to confront the infodemic, leaving the four institutions—in an environment of information bankruptcy and a mandate to rebuild trust and chart a new path forward. Recent research shows that governments are not seen as competent, nor ethical. Rather businesses are more trusted increasingly being asked to take on responsibilities that historically have been responsibilities for governments.

She talks about exciting new opportunities when it comes to trust research. The interview concludes with Tonia’s vision of the main challenges of trust research. She talks about stakeholder capitalism and the debate as to who should the primary stakeholder of business be.

The Battle of Seattle

Tonia speaks during the interview about “the Battle of Seattle”. This refers to the Seattle WTO protests of 1999, in full Seattle World Trade Organization protests of 1999, also called Battle of Seattle, a series of marches, direct actions, and protests carried out from November 28 through December 3, 1999, that disrupted the World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference in Seattle, Washington. Comprising a broad and diffuse coalition of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) and other labor unions, student groups, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), media activists, international farm and industrial workers, anarchists, and others, the Seattle WTO protests are often viewed as the inauguration of the antiglobalization movement.

Edelman publications

Edelman published several studies in 2022:

2022 Edelman Trust Barometer (Released January 2022): Edelman’s main study, produced over the past 22 years, which is focused on analyzing trust in institutions: business, government, NGOs, and media. This year’s report was focused on the Cycle of Distrust, fueled by a growing lack of faith in media and government and resulting in a growing expectation on business to address societal problems.

2022 Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report: The Geopolitical Business (Released May 2022): Launched in May at Davos, this Edelman report found that geopolitics is now a priority issue for businesses to take a stand on, in addition to existing societal issues. We also found that overwhelmingly, CEOs are now expected to shape policy on societal and geopolitical issues.

2022 Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report: The New Cascade of Influence (Released June 2022): This is Edelman’s sixth annual report on trust in brands and set out to understand how emerging expectations of consumers intersect with generational change. For the first time, we’ve included a supplemental deep dive into youth (age 14-17). The research covers a range of topics but found that Gen Z especially is feeling a sense of responsibility and urgency and have an outsized influence on the behavior of older generations and on the converging expectations for brands and business.

Transcript

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Book details

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Contact Paul C. Bauer on Twitter

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Gen Z & Trust

Gen Z trends

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Conservatism, emancipation in emerging markets

Transcript Interview Martijn Lampert

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YouTube video (with subtitles)

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Interorganizational trust

On the definition of trust

Competence, Integrity and Benevolence

Trust and why many M&A transactions fail

Organizational trust and the need for a human face

Interview with subtitles (TrustTalk YouTube channel)

Transcript of the Interview

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Edelman’s Trust Research

The Battle of Seattle

Edelman publications

Transcript

YouTube, with subtitles

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