This paper aims at developing an original account of trust in the framework of large scale, international collective action institutions. Our research question focuses on the structures and mechanisms that are necessary to sustain the trust needed to uphold the effective operation of institutions for collective action. Our theoretical framework for studying trust is based on the social capital theory. Social capital is defined as the features of social organization, such as trust, networks and norms that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit. We claim that in different sectors and contexts stakeholders encounter difficulties in collaborating in setting up experimental institutions for collective action. In order to generate more collaboration, stakeholders need to create structures that incite actors to find better ways to sustain trust, to integrate the 1 Equal contribution by the first two authors. 152 Benjamin Six et al. process of sustaining trust in the organization, and to nourish it with the precise normative idea behind the institutional apparatus. In the plant and biomedical sector, stakeholders have encountered difficulties in sustaining trust while experimenting with different coordination mechanisms for dealing with the increased appropriation of knowledge through patents. Our analysis of some examples from the plant and biomedical sector suggest that institutions could be understood as complex pragmatic connectors of trust, i.e. social matrices of collective action that sustain individual commitment, where routine and reflexivity drive trust-based coordination mechanisms in interaction with their environment.

This paper presents a philosophical reflection on the concept of trust in order to promote a pragmatic reflexivity in institutionalist theory. The objective of this article isto indicate why the best way to deal with trust issues is to reflexively balance their rational and routine origins. Understood as an individualist effort for the rationalaction theory, such reflexive requirement nevertheless asks for a complex interrogationof the nature of the intersubjectivity at stake. To fully understand the sources and themechanisms of institution-based trust requires taking into account the peculiar bondthat actors have with their own institutional framing as a condition of stability of their common-sense world. People rely on institutions to interact on daily basis andreflexivity is the mechanism that operates the equilibrium between individual reasonand institutional routine. Neoinstitutionalist approaches in organisational theory areoften understood as having integrated such modality. W... This paper presents a philosophical reflection on the concept of trust in order to promote a pragmatic reflexivity in institutionalist theory. The objective of this article is to indicate why the best way to deal with trust issues is to reflexively balance their rational and routine origins. Understood as an individualist effort for the rational action theory, such reflexive requirement nevertheless asks for a complex interrogation of the nature of the intersubjectivity at stake. To fully understand the sources and the mechanisms of institution-based trust requires taking into account the peculiar bond that actors have with their own institutional framing as a condition of stability of their common-sense world. People rely on institutions to interact on daily basis and reflexivity is the mechanism that operates the equilibrium between individual reason and institutional routine. Neoinstitutionalist approaches in organisational theory are often understood as having integrated such modality. We believe on the contrary that they have not sufficiently taken into account the reflexive requirement where a pragmatic understanding of institutional trust does. Our contribution calls then for a research methodology based on scientific humility and for the definition of pluralist and experimental collective action principles.

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