This paper analyzes trust and power as means of co-ordinating trans-organizational relationships. It is argued that, depending on the institutional environment, there are two distinct patterns of controlling relationships, where trust and power are interrelated in quite different ways. First, both mechanisms are generated at the inter-personal level and either trust or power dominates the relationship. Second, power occurs at the level of the structural framework of relationships and is highly conducive to developing trust between individual organizations. Thus, specific forms of trust and power are identified and the institutional environment is viewed as playing a crucial role in shaping the quality of trans-organizational relations. The theoretical background of the paper mainly draws on conceptual ideas of Systems Theory, Structuration Theory and New Institutionalism

This paper deals with the role of institutions in the development of trust in relationships between organizations. We review various strands of literature on organizational trust and examine the assumptions made about how trust building processes are influenced by institutional arrangements. Following this conceptual analysis, we discuss four mechanisms that are pivotal in the development of institutional-based trust. We also examine four situations where the influence of institutions can be particularly conducive to building trust. Finally, we argue that each of the situations calls for specific mechanisms to be predominantly employed in order to effectively create trust in inter-organizational relationships.

Trust plays a fundamental role in facilitating social exchange, yet recent global events have undermined trust in many of society's institutions and organizations. This raises the pertinent question of how trust in organizations and institutions can be restored once it is lost. The emerging literature on trust repair is largely focused at the micro-level, with limited examination of how these processes operate at the macro level and across levels. In this introductory essay, we show how the papers in this special issue each advance our understanding of macro-level trust repair. We draw on these papers, as well as the extant interdisciplinary literature, to propose an integrated conceptual model of six key mechanisms for restoring trust in organizations and institutions, highlighting the merits, limits and paradoxes of each. We conclude that no single mechanism can be relied on to rebuild organizational trust and identify a future research agenda for advancing scholarly understanding of organizational and institutional trust repair.

Trust is analysed as a means to reduce uncertainty and risk in vertical inter-firm relationships. Both theoretically and with reference to empirical comparative research (Britain and Germany), it is shown that trust-based relations between buyer and supplier firms rarely evolve spontaneously on the level of individual interaction but are highly dependent on the existence of stable legal, political and social institutions.Descriptors: supplier relations, trust, neo-institutionalism, institutional embeddedness of the firm,