Communicating in a Climate of Mistrust

By Philip Robertson vice president, marketing Daniel Yankelovich. lnc.

(Second of Two Parts.

See Jan., p12 for Part One) the country's faults. Even though most people rejected the criticism, some of it got through. These various influences combined to create the new climate of doubt, skepticism, and mistrust of our institutions in which we now live.

This process ofconverting desires into rights is not new. Indeed, it is a very old trend, long recognized by historians as part of a worldwide revolution of rising expectations. But in the 1960s, it accelerated and it assumed new political and institutional forms. It has given rise to a variety of social movements such as the Civil Rights movement, the Student movement, the Consumer Rights movement, the Ecology movemento the Woman's movement, etc.

By the end of the 1960s the country was reeling under the combined impact of the various social movements, the growth of new social rights, the sense that our institutions were growing too large and powerful at public expense, and the constant hammering away by social critics at Philip Robertson, one of a tearn of major speakers at the recent Ameri' can Forest Institute annual rneeting in Portland, is currently superuising preparation of a special opinion study for the forest products industry to help gauge the extent to which the public is willing to pay for enaironmental improaement. For earlier couerage of that important gathering, see The Merchant Magazine, Noaember issue, p. 10.-Editor.

(4) The consumer mouement. The consumer rnovement focused these various social forces sharply on business. As part of the psychology of entitlement, the consumer movement helped to crystallize the idea of consumer rights, the notion that the consumer had a right, guaranteed by government, to be assured of product saI'ety, truth in advertising, truth in packaging, etc.

Exploiting the public's growing fear of its powerlessness, the consumer movement drove home the point that the giant corporations were all-powerful but unresponsive to the consumer. The consumer movement also helped to channel the public's growing feeling of moral uneasiness and to pin part of the blame on business. As part of this trend, there is also an effort to tie business to Watergate, even though many business executives are severe critics of the Administration on the moral issues raised by Watergate.

I this sense, even though the decline of confidence in business in not an isolated phenomenon but part of an overall erosion of public confidence in all institutions, the immediate cause of the new distrust in business is related clearly and specifically to the impact of the consumer movement. As a result, the majority ofpeople today share the feeling that business is putting its own shortterm profits ahead of its concern with product safety, product quality, value for the money, and service to the public.

(5) The cult of performance. Most business executives sympathize with consumerso demands and wish to be responsive to them because they reflect their own business values as well as the consumers. [n practice, however, meeting consumers' demands often requires sacrificing short-term profitability for the sake of long-term customer building. This too is good business: it is the way most great businesses were built. But here is where we run up against some countertrends in the form of the cult of performance created by stock market pressures. What emerges is a picture of the country moving in one direction and business moving in the opposite direction. The country is moving toward new values, new social rights, new demands which may require business to broaden its objectives and even to sacrifice some shortterm profitability for the sake of guaranteeing customer saisfaction. Simultaneously, goaded by the performance cult, business has been shoring up its organizational structures to put ever more emphasis on short-term profits even when the action taken to assure short-term profitability conflicts with new public demands.

Paradoxically, just at the stage in our history when people are more interested in learning how to live than in how to make aliving, and just when people are beginning to lift their noses from the grindstone, at precisely this point in time business has learned to make a bigger, better, and more efficient grindstone for itself.

To change the metaphor, business and the country are moving in opposite directions and are passing each other by like ships that pass in the night.

(6) Institutional lag. In the 1950s and l!)60s there was a good fit between what business offered and what the country wanted. From World War II to the mid-1960s. business gave the country what it wanteda huge GNP, a booming economy, full employment, affluence for the majority, and an abundance of new products and new technology.

In today's current climate of opinion, however, economic growth and affluence are taken for granted, and people are starting to become aware ofthe price the country is paying for economic growth in pollution of the environment and in quality of life.

Story at a Glance

In this second of two parts, Philip Robertson defines some of the factors that caused the present anti-business climate and offers suggestions on how best to deal with several problem situations that can occur fora company. This installment picks up at the fourth of the eight background causes Robertson describes.

Many new desires are blossoming and many old values are being questioned. A new set of expectations is springing up about what business should be doing for the country over and above its pursuit of short-term profitability.

[n a word, the "fito'between what business is doing and what the country wants is not as good in the 1970s as it was in the 1950s and 1960s. This lack of "good fit" shows itself in the form of three new conditions that confiont business in the 1970s. The first is an exponential growth in the sheer number of demands made on the corporation in the name of the public interest:

(E.g.) Ailocate more resources to pollution control.

(E.g.) Curb the use of wood and paper products to preserve natural resources.

(E.g.) Make work more interesting and meaningful for workers.

There are literally hundreds of such demands, all of them with impact on profits.

Secondly, many ofthe groups advancing these demands had acquired a political clout they did not enjoy in the past. Witnesso for example, the growth of:

(E.g.) New federal agencies (e.g., E.P.A.).

(E.g.) New legislation (consumer protection bills).

(E.g.) New regulations (e.g., environmental impact statements).

(E.g.) New legal and quasi-legal devicesused by activists such as The Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth (e.g. class action suits).

(E.g.) New uses of publicity (e.g. making demands at stockholder meetings).

(E.g.) New interpretations of old laws (e.g., use of SEC disclosure laws to cover environmental action).

And third, at the same time, as we have seen, there has been a dramatic decline of public confidence in business.

(7) Social stability.It is important to avoid crisis mongering. We do have a serious problem; we do not have a crisis.

To monitor the country's state of mind, we have developed what we call a "social stability index." The index is comprised of two numbers. The first is a measure of the intensitv of people's concerns about matters that affect their personal lives, such as money, health, the education of their children. and their outlook on the future. The second number measures the intensity of people's social concerns on such matters as inflation. A high number in both categories reflects a state of social stability. If the level of intensity of people's personal concerns (as reflected in the first number) is high, we know we are in trouble. For this means that people's personal lives are being disturbed directly and urgently. If the intensity of people's social concerns is high (as reflected in the second number), we know that people are worrying about what is happening in the country. A high number in both categories reflects a state of social instability. A low number in both categories reflects a time of serenity and harmony, such as perhaps existed in the late 50s and early 60s. What we find today is a low number in the personal concern category and a high number in the social concern category. Expressed in percentage terms, the intensity of personal concern is at a 377o level intensity as compared to an 877o level of intensity of social concern. We interpret this as meaning that while the country is distressed about its social problems, the personal lives of most people go on from day to day in a fairly satisfactory and unruffled fashion. And indeed, at the present time, people are somewhat optimistic about their own personal future though they are deeply concerned about the country.

(8) Short-terrn oersus long-term strategies. We should distinguish between a long-term strategy and short-term tactics. The soundest long-term strategy for business, in our view, is one of gradual adaptation to a changing business environment and the avoidance of a "push-the-panic-button" crisis response. The most appropriate short-term tactics are those needed to dispel the current climate of mistrust and to restore a working basis of confidence.

For those individuals and companies that find themselves in the adoanced stage of mistrust when people are anxious and tend to blame them specifically for their problem, a different communication

(Please turn to page 48)