Trust has become the foundational currency of stakeholder capitalism—yet the path for trust-building is changing faster than most leaders are able to adapt. Society has shifted expectations of what it takes to earn and restore trust.

Edelman began our investment in trust in 2000 with the launch of the Edelman Trust Barometer, because we believed trust and its impact on the world deserved to be studied and understood. The Trust Institute builds on 20+ years of global research across millions of stakeholders to drive enhanced, data-informed decision- making around the new imperative of trust.

Our mission is to provide leaders across institutions with a deeper understanding of the state of trust, and to equip those leaders with actionable insight about the changing dynamics of trust- building and erosion.

The Edelman Trust Institute partners with academic institutions, companies, foundations and other institutions to conduct research and apply advanced analytics to expand trust knowledge and extract new understanding. We explore the state of trust in institutions and brands to understand and document how social, political, and cultural changes are shaping trust and the expectation for institutions and leaders to act.

The Trust Barometer surveys more than 34,000 people in 28 countries annually. As of 2021, Edelman studies on trust have surveyed over 2 million respondents and gathered 23 million data points, researched and analyzed 87,000 employee reviews and more than 150 peer-reviewed academic articles, and conducted in-depth interviews with C-level business leaders around the world. Our cross-cultural insights on trust are widely cited in media outlets such as The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Economist, Fortune, and Forbes.

Edelman began its investment in trust because we believed trust and its impact on the world deserved to be studied and understood.

We conceived the Edelman Trust Barometer in 2000 as a direct response to the “Battle in Seattle,” when non-governmental organizations stormed the World Trade Organization to protest globalization as an unfair distribution of wealth. Edelman partnered with business and academic experts across disciplines to articulate the construct of trust and fielded a study polling opinion shapers in five countries on their trust in NGOs relative to media, government and business. In the two decades since, Edelman has studied the dynamic shifts in trust across institutions, governments, cultures, and geographies globally, substantiating that trust is essential to future success on a societal and on a company level.

Today, society is at an inflection point. Trust is now the foundational currency of stakeholder capitalism and increasingly a defining business metric for companies and brands. The Trust Institute’s research insights continue to drive the global conversation around our deeper understanding of trust and its linkage to success.

Currently, the Trust Institute is focused on examining the new pressures and expectations on business in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of business as the most trusted institution today.