Reason to Disbelieve

Researchers have found trust in another party derives from three factors: their competence, empathy and values. The theory is dubbed the ABI model for ability, benevolence and integrity.
Beth Kowitt "How Americans’ Trust in Big Business Went From Bad to Worse" Bloomberg Opinion. Wednesday, 24 September, 2024

This was news to me, because personally, my factors are different. Sure, competence/ability still counts, but I tend to place more focus on the other party's interests and incentives, and the relative balance of power between the parties. In fact, interests and incentive seemed conspicuous in their absence. When the interests of the parties are aligned or each has some ability to exact a cost for a breach, I'm more likely to see the two sides as having reasons to trust one another than I would if their interests are at cross purposes and one party has no workable recourse if the other renege on the agreement.

Cecily Cooper's observation that politics (or perhaps more accurately, partisanship) disrupts the ABI model may speak to this. There was a post on LinkedIn by a Bloomberg editor that may be illustrative.  In the comments, it was fairly clear which commenters were partisan, they professed a belief that "big business" is untrustworthy in part because it is aligned with interests they perceive as hostile (the "other side") and thus, lack integrity. In this sense, it appears that interests and perceptions of values intersect to lower both trust. And this seems to be just as much of a factor when it comes to broader social trust as it is in business.

And I would venture that perceptions of recourse may also explain why distrust is becoming correlated with changes in the percentages of GDP going into worker compensation (falling) and corporate earnings (rising). Differences in wealth tend to create a certain level of protection from the less well-off. Once a company like Boeing becomes, as noted in the article, "critically important to the US economy," it's difficult for regulators to force it to consider the public's interests as well as shareholders. After all, what are they going to do to sanction noncompliance? Damage the one remaining major domestic aircraft manufacturer? (We all know how that would play out in an election cycle.) Accountability is like anything else; as it becomes more expensive, people are less likely to purchase it. Especially if the price is measured in standard of living.

In the end, I suspect that corporations understand (correctly or incorrectly) that they don't actually need the general public to trust them. What they need is for investors to trust them. And as the wealth derived from business returns insulates investors from the sorts of considerations that motivate the public at large, businesses understand that they have to be viewed as competent and aligned on incentives by those same investors, as they can, and will, punish executives in a way that the public doesn't. And, at the same time, the public isn't generally in a position to protect them from investor displeasure. And as the interests of investors and the broader public (and between sectors of that broader public) continue to diverge, trust will continue to erode. Whether this growing distrust is chalked up to being matters of incentives, values or partisanship doesn't really matter.