Trust as a Process:A Three-Dimensional Approach - Khodyakov(2007) Sociology

Introduction

1. Managers are concerned with building trust among team members to maximize group potential. (p 115)

2. A close analysis of the ways the term ‘trust’ is used in the literature reveals a disagreement among scholars about the definition, characteristics, and even the nature of trust. The multiplicity of meanings of trust creates a measure of conceptual confusion, because confidence, reliability, faith, and trust are often used as synonyms.1 Moreover, there is no consensus among social scientists about the object of trust. Can we trust only people, or can we also trust institutions, such as schools, businesses, and states? If we can trust both people and institutions, is there any conceptual or empirical difference between interpersonal and institutional trust?

Trust

low trust                                             high trust

(interpersonal trust)                              (institutional trust)
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3. Following Fukuyama’s (1995) distinction between high-trust societies that have potential for successful long-term cooperative and communal partnerships through civil society3 and low-trust societies that are characterized by the absence of civil society and the prevalence of in-group relationships,

4. According to Fukuyama, if a society has a narrow radius of trust – the circle of people among whom cooperation and mutual understanding exist – and develops trust only in the private sphere, it is a ‘low-trust’ society. In such societies, people tend to trust only those to whom they are similar. In contrast, in societies with a large radius of trust, citizens actively participate in civic activities and meet different people, which helps them develop trust in the public sphere and societal institutions.

5. Putnam (2000) distinguishes between thick interpersonal trust, which is embedded in strong interpersonal relationships, and thin interpersonal trust, which refers to trust in weak ties, he excludes trust in institutions – or what he calls ‘political trust’ – from his analysis because of the lack of correlation between trust in people and trust in the state.

Thick interpersonal Trust

6. It is the trust that people have in their family members, relatives, and close friends. Thick interpersonal trust is necessary for developing an optimistic attitude towards others, which makes social interaction possible.

7. Thick interpersonal trust is similar to what Zucker (1986) calls ‘characteristicbased trust’ and Uslaner (2002) labels ‘particularized trust’ because it is tied to such personal characteristics as gender, ethnicity and cultural background.

8. The basis for thick interpersonal trust therefore is familiarity and similarity with a trustee.

9. thick interpersonal trust originates in relationships with strong ties and depends on the personalities of both the trustee and the trustor, because it involves personal familiarity with the other person and strong emotional commitment
to the relationship (Lewis and Weigert, 1985).

Thin Interpersonal Trust

10. In a contemporary society that is characterized by social diversity, people interact with others whom they may not know well (Barber, 1983; Lewis and Weigert, 1985; Luhmann, 1988). Dealing with such people is about developing weak
social ties that are invaluable for obtaining access to otherwise unavailable resources (Granovetter, 1973). Trusting members of out-groups is about developing thin interpersonal trust, which is also known in the literature as ‘processbased trust’ (Zucker, 1986) or ‘generalized trust’ (Uslaner, 2002).

11. Hardin (1998) claims that trust is an ‘encapsulated interest’, which is based on the knowledge of others’ goals and interests.

12. Trust is necessary for successful cooperation, because both parties have similar needs and interests, and they recognize the importance of collaboration in achieving common goals.

13. Thin interpersonal trust, however, is riskier than thick interpersonal trust, because the former is about relationships with people whose real intentions may not be clear (Heimer, 2001; Luhmann, 1988). These risks significantly increase
our vulnerability and dependency on someone else’s actions. Nonetheless, the more people know about other actors, the longer they interact with the same partners, the more likely they are to establish trustworthy relationships. These
assumptions about trust require that people have detailed information about the other party, and that both parties act rationally.

14. However, people cannot be fully rational in their actions, because they have significantly limited and often biased information about their partners. Instead of being rational, people have what is called ‘bounded rationality’ (Simon, 1957), which means that social actors have a ‘limited cognitive competence to receive, store, and process information’ (Williamson, 1994: 101–2). People act in an environment of limited, approximate, and simplified models of reality, and their decisions depend more on already established patterns of behaviour, traditions, routines, and schemata (DiMaggio, 1997).

15. the trustworthiness of a potential trustee primarily depends on two factors: the image of intermediaries4 that the
trustor relies on for obtaining information about trustees (Coleman, 1990; Levi, 1998) and/or the trustworthiness of institutions that back up trustees (Hardin,1996).

16. thin interpersonal trust is created through interacting with people whom we do not know well and depends on the reputation of either a potential trustee or a trust intermediary. It represents reliance on weak ties and is based on the
assumption that another person would reciprocate and comply with our expectations of his or her behavior, as well as with existing formal and ethical rules.

Trust in Institutions

17. trust in institutions is very different from trust in people, because the former may presuppose no ‘encounters at all with the individuals or groups who are in some way “responsible” for them’ (Giddens,1990: 83).

18. It is the impersonal nature of institutions that makes creation of institutional trust so difficult, because it is more problematic to trust some abstract principles or anonymous others who do not express any feelings and emotions.

19. Citizens are more likely to rely on the government and its institutions in their everyday activities. Therefore, trust
in institutions depends on their perceived legitimacy, technical competence, and ability to perform assigned duties efficiently.

20. One of the major weaknesses of social capital theory is that it treats trust as a variable. Because the composition of the three types of trust in society is constantly changing, it seems more logical to treat trust not as a variable with different levels of strength, but rather as a process of its creation, development, and maintenance.

21. Scholars often argue whether trust should be used as an independent or a dependent variable. Those who treat trust as an independent variable are primarily concerned with the benefits of trust.

21. They focus on the potential of trust to reduce transaction costs (Nooteboom, 2000), facilitate cooperation (Gambetta, 1988), create social capital(Putnam, 2000; Putnam et al., 1993), and reduce the risks of uncertainty (Luhmann, 1988).

22. I have analyzed the complexity of trust by presenting a synthetic approach that combines three objects of trust relationships – strong ties, weak ties, and social institutions – and views trust not as a variable but as a process.