Abstract:

There is an increasing demand for companies to be held as accountable towards multiple stakeholders in society as they are towards customers and shareholders. Despite the high awareness of good corporate governance and the mounting reporting on the 'triple bottom line' of financial, societal, and the environmental accountability, little has been done to measure the levels of trust that a company enjoys among its various stakeholder groups. This paper describes the conceptual and exploratory phases of developing a cross-industry Trust Barometer that will be used as a longitudinal measurement of stakeholders' perceptions of the trustworthiness of top South African companies.