Crunching data to rebuild trust
Corporate bosses around the world feel the need to win back public trust, according to the PwC CEO survey presented in Davos on Tuesday. And executives think they have found the answer - new technology.
More than half (55%) of the 1,400 CEOs surveyed said that “lack of trust in business” could threaten the performance of their companies.
But it appears that the fourth industrial revolution – the big theme of this year’s World Economic Forum annual meeting – can lend a public relations hand to firms struggling with negative headlines. The key is to crunch enough data to find out what people really want – and then give it to them.
Nine out of 10 CEOs feels that technology can help them to “deliver against stakeholder expectations”. This is PwC-speak for “figuring out what people don’t like about you so that you can make a better impression.”
According to PwC chairman Dennis Nally, global firms are taking a long hard look at themselves in the mirror and asking themselves how they can be better citizens. Four years ago, this concept barely registered during the survey but now it has become a major theme, Nally told journalists.
So what’s changed? It appears that companies think they have struck a gold mine. Before big data they were groping in the dark about what people expected of them. Now they believe they can truly read people’s minds.
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