The Post-Trust Economy
By Matt Thomas, Founder, Stake Reputation
There was a time when trust could be managed.
A good story, a visible purpose, a confident spokesperson, that used to be enough.
Today those tools still exist, but they no longer work.
Across every sector, the signals of belief are fading. It isn’t outrage; it’s withdrawal.
People are still watching, still caring, but no longer convinced that statements translate into structure.
We’ve entered what might best be called the post-trust economy, an environment where credibility has become a design problem, not a communications problem.
1. From faith to fatigue
For more than a decade, business built moral capital through narrative.
Purpose campaigns, sustainability surcharges, social pledges, all relied on the public’s willingness to believe.
That belief has quietly eroded. The Pew Research Center reports that institutional trust in major democracies is at its lowest level in half a century. The World Values Survey finds the same pattern globally, linking the decline not to ideology but to perceived unfairness in how systems distribute cost and benefit.
Australians haven’t become cynical; they’re tired of carrying a load they can’t see anyone else lift. They no longer confuse good words with good systems.
2. Proof has replaced promise
Belief hasn’t disappeared, it has changed currency.
What used to be bought with persuasion now has to be earned through proof.
A Harvard Business Review study by Buell showed that when customers can observe how a service is produced, satisfaction and trust rise even when outcomes are identical. Transparency itself creates value.
Similarly, IBM’s 2023 Sustainability as a Business Strategy report found that 71 percent of consumers rate traceability and proof of origin as more influential than brand reputation.
In a post-trust economy, visibility of operation is more persuasive than expression of intent.
3. Reputation has become a systems discipline
Most organisations still locate trust inside communications. That model no longer fits.
Reputation now behaves like infrastructure: it needs design, maintenance, and audit.
The OECD’s Building Trust to Reinforce Democracy report reached the same conclusion: systems that make fairness observable outperform those that rely on slogans or symbolic gestures.
Practically, this means:
Transparency as a design feature, not a compliance ritual.
Performance framing linking ESG to operational efficiency.
Passive participation, where good behaviour is the default.
When trust is built this way, it compounds like capital. When it relies on narrative alone, it depreciates.
4. The economics of credibility
Research by Bain & Company has shown that there is a sustainability disconnect, that intent to buy sustainable products remains high, but only 14 percent of consumers follow through. The obstacle isn’t apathy; it’s friction, price, complexity, and disbelief.
That gap between belief and behaviour is now one of the largest sources of economic waste in modern markets.
The businesses that close it will own the next growth curve; those that don’t will keep spending on campaigns that no longer move markets.
5. The quiet advantage
The World Economic Forum’s Future of Trust and Integrity calls this shift the next competitive edge: verifiable systems that make integrity easy to observe and hard to fake.
The strongest brands of the next decade will not be the ones that inspire belief, but the ones that show their work. They will treat data as proof, process as message, and delivery as persuasion.
Leaders who fail to adapt will find that the more they speak, the less they’re heard.
Trust hasn’t vanished, it has evolved.
From emotion to evidence, from statement to system, those who recognise that shift will rebuild credibility as a durable asset.
Because in the post-trust economy, belief is no longer bought. It’s engineered.