Here is another shot at public confidence in major companies. It is a
byproduct of my work for a project at Johns Hopkins. In that project, I was
interested, among other, in the confidence levels public places in major
companies in different countries.
I used the World Values Survey (WVS) conducted in 1991 by a team under the
direction of Ronald Ingelhard. WVS asks respondents a number of standard
questions (similar those found in General Social Survey conducted annually
in the US) on various social, political and economic topics. The 1991 WVS
was conducted in nearly 50 countries, where representative samples of the
population were selected. I excluded former "Communist" countries from the
analysis.
The survey asked, among other, about the Respondent's confidence in various
types of public institutions, such as government agencies, the media,
education , church, unions, or major companies (altogether 12 types of
institutions). The reponses were recorded on a 4-point scale ranging from
"a lot" to "none at all."
What I was intersted is how individals scored on their confidence in major
companies relative to their confidence in other public institution (direct
comparisons of responses are meaningless since "a lot" or "none at all" mean
different things for different people). Consequently, I calculated a score
indicating how an individual respondent's confidence in major companies
differ from his/her average confidence level in other public institutions.
The score ranges from -3 to +3 -- the lower the number the lower the
confidence in major companies relative to other public instituions. I then
averaged these scores for each country. The results are displayed in the
table below.
PUBLIC CONFIDENCE IN MAJOR COMPANIES RELATIVE TO OTHER
PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS, BY COUNTRY
in the ascending order of confidence level
country N Mean Confidence
level St. dev.
skorea 1,239 -0.610 0.747
turkey 938 -0.598 0.829
denmark 978 -0.267 0.678
iceland 675 -0.223 0.669
wgermany 2,093 -0.184 0.699
ireland 989 -0.160 0.711
nireland 300 -0.158 0.624
finland 535 -0.141 0.638
japan 987 -0.123 0.531
india 2,393 -0.122 0.766
austria 1,429 -0.100 0.659
usa 1,797 -0.096 0.657
norway 1,224 -0.093 0.610
canada 1,711 -0.074 0.661
nethland 1,000 -0.057 0.616
britain 1,433 -0.048 0.712
argentin 1,002 -0.004 0.730
portugal 1,140 0.008 0.661
belgium 2,736 0.009 0.688
mexico 1,506 0.021 0.744
chile 1,500 0.037 0.818
spain 4,070 0.046 0.680
sweden 951 0.077 0.659
s africa 2,490 0.160 0.706
brazil 1,775 0.170 0.838
france 902 0.188 0.671
italy 2,005 0.258 0.765
source: author's calculations based on the 1991 World Values Survey data
NOTES:
Mean confidence level = an average score comparing public confidence in
major companies to confidence in other public institutions; the lower the
score, the lower the confidence in major companies level;
N = number of respondents in each country used to calculate the mean
confidence level;
St. dev = standard deviation from the mean (for those statistically
challenged: greater numbers indicate greater variety in confidence levels in
a country).
Institutions used in comparisons: church, armed forces, education, legal
system, press, unions, police, parliament, civil service, major companies,
social security, and TV.
---------------------------------
The greatest variety in confidence in major companies was found in Brazil,
closely follwoed by Turkey -- the least variety was found in Japan. Souht
Korean public was most distrustful toward major corporations, Italians --
most trustful (sic!).
What is really surprising is that countries that conservative pundits like
Fukuyama portray as paragons of public confidence in major corporations --
such as Japan or West Germany -- turned out to have very low levels of
public confidence in major corporations. France and Italy, on the other
hand, Fukuyama's paragons of distrust in big business, turned out quite
high. The US is in the middle -- our confidence in major companies is below
that of our neighbors -- Canadians and Mexicans.
Again, these are relative numbers, they say that in the US, average
confidence in major companies is somewhat below public trust in all other
public institutions combined (a negative mean confidence score); In Canada,
it is also below, but not as much as in the US, while in Mexico (a positive
score) -- it is slighly above confidence in other public institutions (a
likely explanation of that is extremely low level of trust in the government
and its agencies in that country; the same probably holds for Italy). These
numbers do NOT tell that Mexicans trust major corporations more than people
in the US do.
wojtek sokolowski
institute for policy studies
johns hopkins university
baltimore, md 21218
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
voice: (410) 516-4056
fax: (410) 516-8233
POLITICS IS THE SHADOW CAST ON SOCIETY BY BIG BUSINESS. AND AS LONG AS THIS
IS SO, THE ATTENUATI0N OF THE SHADOW WILL NOT CHANGE THE SUBSTANCE.
- John Dewey
