What Level of Trust is Needed for Sustainability?

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to argue that the main ontological position of modern capitalism, founded on the philosophy of utilitarianism, derived of course from the work of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, is fundamentally flawed as it ignores power inequalities and assumes that the economic fiction of perfect competition can actually exist. Design/methodology/approach - Nevertheless it provides a legitimating mechanism for modern capitalism and the operation of firms within a market economy. More significantly, from the viewpoint of this paper, is the problem caused by the naïve assumption that the firm as nexus of treaties is sufficient to negotiate the contracts between the various stakeholders. This is significantly inadequate because it ignores the aspect of trust between the parties – the focus of the paper. Findings - In this paper it is argued that the sustainability of a firm is not predicated in the negotiated contracts it enacts but rather in the underlying trust which is implied and that one of the problems of the modern firm is that this trust has been negated in the drive for efficiency and shareholder value. The purpose of this paper therefore is to explore the nature of trust between the various stakeholders to the social contract which the firm enacts, paying particular attention to the involuntary stakeholders. In doing so, the role of trust in each aspect of sustainability identified in a previous paper is analysed and consider whether it is necessary for each stakeholder or just they key ones, or whether it is different for each aspect? In doing so, particular attention is paid to involuntary stakeholders. Originality/value - This argument has implications for every business in managing its stakeholder relations.