Trust in Organizations: Frontiers of Theory and Research. - book reviews

Administrative Science Quarterly,  March, 1998  by Denise M. Rousseau

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Trust in Organizations is the product of a two-day conference at Stanford, and after reading this book, I came away envious: what a terrific intellectual experience those two days must have been. These authors have pushed the edge of the envelope in advancing our thinking on trust in both social psychology and organizational research. Kramer and Tyler frame their focus as an alternative to the rational choice model dominant in social/public policy and prevailing models of the independent individual in economics and psychology and in intellectual discourse. Trust is, by definition, interpersonal and rarely private. A central theme in this book is a novel one in both social psychology and organizational behavior: the role of obligations in social life. For a long while, I have been struck by the general absence of the word "obligation" in the lexicons of social psychology and organizational behavior, yet anthropologists, with a perhaps broader scope of study and possibly a less atomistic view of people, can seldom describe a society without evoking the concept. Obligations are front and center in this book's development of issues surrounding trust. While Kramer's chapter notes that faith in the binding power of obligations has declined as we move from no-fault divorce to no-fault job loss, the central role of trust in others to fulfill their commitments is critical to all forms of social capital. Tyler and DeGoey make a compelling case for the link between trust in authorities and belief in the obligation to obey the law. Trust also gives authorities, be they top management or the president, a cushion of support in times of crises.

At its heart, this book maintains throughout that trust is an orientation toward society and others that has social meaning beyond rational calculations. Throughout, it maintains a skepticism of the negotiations framework, in which failures to achieve ends are seen as reflecting poor understanding of self-interests and limited human ability to "do the math" correctly when handling complex information.

The old English proverb maintained, "Poor trust is dead, bad pay killed him." But more is at issue here than money. How people are treated provides them with important information about their self-worth and self-esteem. In different forms, several authors take exception to Williamson's argument (cited on p. 346) that trust is reserved for special relations between family and friends and that "commercial relations do not qualify." Tyler and DeGoey offer an excellent critique. In this same vein, Lewicki and Bunker broaden our thinking about the nature of trust by articulating what one might refer to as a "bandwidth model of trust." They postulate three forms of trust with different capacities for sustaining social relations: calculus-based trust (economic exchange), knowledge-based trust (a relationship exists with sufficient information about persons to understand their behavior), and identification-based trust (group or intimate relations). Moving from one to another involves a shift of frame with respect to the nature of the relationship. Lewicki and Bunker's discussion dovetails with the chapter following it, by Sheppard and Tuchinsky, which visits the debate of whether control is a substitute for trust or a requirement of it. Flipping around Lewicki and Bunker's types of trust, Sheppard and Tuchinsky explore how control manifests in the three forms of trust and offer a very useful discussion of supplier relations.

The title indicates that the book is about trust in organizations. Although several chapters are only loosely related to organizational issues, this book de facto raises the question, What does it mean to have an organizational theory of trust? One key element is serious consideration of levels of analysis. In keeping with this, the editors have designed the book's chapters so the reader can ride the organizational elevator from macro through meso to microlevels of analysis. At the macrolevel, Creed and Miles further develop the issues raised in their Research in Organizational Behavior chapter on how trust in organizations has shifted over the history of modern firms. The essential argument they make is that organizational forms, from hierarchies to networks, have different trust requirements. Kipnis discusses the link between organizational technology and trust.

Several articles are richly cast at the mesolevel. Using research and development networks and industrial districts as examples, Powell argues that trust is learned and reinforced through ongoing interactions, and neither calculation nor culture account for it. From a network perspective, Burt and Knez offer evidence that third parties weaken already weak social relations (they gossip!) but strengthen strong relations. Zucker et al. outline the high value of intellectual capital and the need to create trust and use information boundaries to retain it. If, as Zucker and her colleagues maintain, distrust is a cost of transacting across boundaries, it is also one potential consequence of poorly implemented change. Sitkin and Stickel describe the adverse consequences associated with unsuccessful attempts to introduce total quality management programs.