Not So Different After All: A Cross-Discipline View Of Trust

Abstract

Our task is to adopt a multidisciplinary view of trust within and between firms, in an effort to synthesize and give insight into a fundamental construct of organizational science. We seek to identify the shared understandings of trust across disciplines, while recognizing that the divergent meanings scholars bring to the study of trust also can add value. Disciplinary differences characterizing traditional treatments of trust suggest that inherent conflicts and divergent assumptions are at work (Fichman, 1997). Economists tend to view trust as either calculative (Williamson, 1993) or institutional (North, 1990). Psychologists commonly frame their assessments of trust in terms of attributes of trustors and trustees and focus upon a host of internal cognitions that personal attributes yield (Rotter, 1967; Tyler, 1990; see Deutsch, 1962, for an example of more calculative framing by a psychologist). Sociologists often find trust in socially embedded properties of relationships among people (Granovetter, 1985) or institutions (Zucker, 1986). These different assumptions are manifest in our divergent use oi language. To some scholars the term "contract" refers to a legal means for avoiding risk where trust is not particularly high (Smitka, 1994; Williamson, 1975); to others the We thank Paul Goodman and Bill McEvily for their helpful comments, Carole McCoy for patient word processing, and Cathy Senderling for her wonderful editing.

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