The Trust Process in Organizations: Empirical Studies of the Determinants and the Process of Trust Development

Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this volume focuses on the trust processes between people within organizations, with an emphasis on empirical studies. Rational foundations and psychological motivations for trust are taken into account through conceptual and empirical chapters. The authors begin by summarizing a number of key elements from the literature including how trust develops in time, and how its development is affected by social-psychological phenomena. This includes the notion of "framing" - the interpretive context in which actions are perceived and evaluated. A conceptual framework is then used to analyse trust and power in the internal relationships of the organization. The contributors take up this issue in an evolutionary analysis of competition between trust and cheating. The conditions for trust in teams, in terms of type of task and team composition are examined, and the effects on trust of different types of leadership are studied. In the concluding chapters, the relation between the control imposed by an expert system and the influence of users is analysed, and the relational signalling perspective is used for a study of norm violation and sanctioning, which in turn is used to analyse trust and trouble.