January 24, 2007 | posted by Michael Baxter in IABN |

The great and the good of the global business world are meeting in Davos Switzerland at the annual World Economic Forum. And as ever with these events, surveys seem to be making the biggest headlines, and over the last few days there has been a glut of survey results. (Maybe it’s time to survey confidence amongst commentators that next year will see even more surveys).

So far there have been two surveys out questioning business leaders, but the meeting organisers also published the result of a survey amongst ordinary people, (not that CEOs aren’t actually that ordinary), and the results show a fascinating divergence of opinion.

The survey that made most of the headlines today was carried out by PricewaterhouseCooopers. It found that of 1,100 CEOs, a staggering 93% are confident of achieving revenue growth over the next three years. This represents a doubling in the number of confident CEOs over the last five years.

Meanwhile, another survey carried out by Gallup on behalf of the meeting organisers, amongst delegates at Davros, found that 65 percent believe that the next generation of global citizens will live in a more prosperous world- albeit, a less safe one.

But your men and women on the street, including those who travel the world on the equivalents of the Clapham Omnibus, are not so sure. Just 40 percent think the next generation will live in a more prosperous world - and a surprisingly high 31 percent of ‘people’ think the next generation will be worse off.

Then there’s the comparison between what the world’s business leaders think of themselves, and what the rest of us think

42 percent of business delegates visiting Geneva’s gathering of leaders reckon they respond well to pressure, strangely only 31 percent of ‘people’ share that view of our business leaders. ‘People’ on the other hand reckon that business leaders are unethical, have too much power and are dishonest (30, 34 and 34 percent respectively), while business leaders who share these qualms number just 25, 24 and 14 percent.

And what do you think of your boss? Or, are you the boss? Apparently, 18 percent of ‘people’ think business leaders are incompetent, and yet just 6 percent of delegates share that view.

It was a similar story with trust. 50 percent of business and political leaders think the best way to recover trust is to be more transparent, and 23 percent reckon that re-connecting with stakeholders is the key. A mere 7 percent of leaders think that punishment of fraudulent behaviour is the answer, and yet 30 percent of ‘people’ think it is.

Moving away from the US and them divide, both the PWC and Gallup polls looked at attitudes to the environment.

The Gallup poll found that protecting the environment was the second most important priority for delegates, with 20 percent of those questioned saying it was a main priority. Only economic growth did better, achieving 26 percent. Reducing war (9 percent) and the war on terrorism (6 percent) were well down the list.

The PWC survey, on the other hand discovered a stark contrast between attitudes to the environment between CEOs in the US, and the rest. 40 percent of CEOs responding to the PWC survey expressed concern about the threat posed by climate change; this figure rises to 58 percent for Asia Pacific CEOs but significantly drops to only 18 percent of North American CEOs.

Finally, there are causes for concern. PWC found that 73 percent worried about over-regulation, up from 64 percent last year. And if you possess key skills, then maybe a move to Asia Pacific might be in order. The survey found that in Asia Pacific concerns are particularly acute about a looming scarcity of key skills, with 88 percent of CEOs in the region citing this as a concern, compared to 72 percent overall.

As for our take, 50 percent of us believe our business leaders are great and all round nice people (can I have that pay rise now? - ed), and half of us think they are mean.