Understanding general distrust of corporations

Organizational research on trust and distrust has focused mainly on interpersonal relationships within organizations or impressions people have about specific companies. Less is known about people's attitudes toward all corporations (ie, as institutions). This article describes a theory of distrust toward corporations, how this attitude forms and how its study can contribute to organizational research. A corporate distrust scale was developed and shown to have favorable psychometric properties and nomological validity. People who scored higher on corporate distrust were higher on general cynicism, organization-specific cynicism, negative affectivity and liberal political attitudes. Corporate distrust correlated negatively with interpersonal trust, positive attitudes toward human nature and belief in a just world. The article suggests that the construct can be used in future research on beliefs about the corporate world. © 2010 Macmillan Publishers Ltd.