A Culture of Trust as a Competitive Advantage in Digital Times

Enste Dominik H.; Kürten Louisa Marie

IW-Trends No. 2 10. July 2018 Dominik Enste / Mara Grunewald / Louisa Kürten New Results from Experimental and Behavioural Economics: A Culture of Trust as a Competitive Advantage in Digital Times

For companies, a lived culture of trust is an important competitive advantage. Particularly in an era of digitalization and increasing complexity, trust provides a sound basis for successful cooperation.

IW-Trends No. 2 10. July 2018 Dominik Enste / Mara Grunewald / Louisa Kürten

New Results from Experimental and Behavioural Economics: A Culture of Trust as a Competitive Advantage in Digital Times

IW-Trends

Download PDF

For companies, a lived culture of trust is an important competitive advantage. Particularly in an era of digitalization and increasing complexity, trust provides a sound basis for successful cooperation.

Contacts

By contrast, when a firm's culture is determined by controls and compliance mechanisms, employee satisfaction and motivation decline, and conflicts between staff and their superiors become more common. To explore the future of the culture of trust in German companies, this study carried out experiments in behavioural economics with junior managers. The results show that young junior managers have a high degree of trust, are willing to cooperate and behave fairly.

[Translate to Englisch:]

IW-Trends No. 2 10. July 2018 Dominik Enste / Mara Grunewald / Louisa Kürten

Dominik Enste / Mara Grunewald / Louisa Kürten: Neue experimentelle und verhaltensökonomische Ergebnisse – Vertrauenskultur als Wettbewerbsvorteil in digitalen Zeiten

IW-Trends

Download PDF

Back to overview

Digitization

Workplace Climate Index 2025: Employees give their workplace high marks

Most employees in Germany rate their working conditions positively. Between late May and early June in 2025 around 5,000 employees were asked to evaluate nine key characteristics of their workplace using school grades.

IW-Report No. 9 9. March 2026 Andrea Hammermann / Oliver Stettes

Trust-based working hours and quality of work

In the coalition agreement for the 21st legislative period, the government intend to regulate working time recording in an unbureaucratic manner and continue to allow trust based working hours without time recording, in line with the European Working Time Directive.