Trusting organizations: The institutionalization of trust in interorganizational relationships

Abstract

Recent research on interorganizational trust has stressed the need to develop a deeper understanding of the multi-level nature of this construct. This article focuses on trust on different analytical levels in an interorganizational context, and on the hitherto underspecified connections between these. Based on an institutionalization approach, it revisits the classic question: (how) can organizations trust each other? To do so, we consider organizations as objects of trust and reappraise the transferral from interpersonal to interorganizational trust in "facework" (Giddens, 1990). We also examine the conflicts and struggles of trust and power that can arise from this process between boundary spanners and their organizational constituents. Next, we consider organizations as subjects of trust in interorganizational relationships. We detail the institutionalization of trust and its reproduction on an organizational level, and how it can be transmitted to new generations of organizational actors, creating path-dependent histories of trust which are truly interorganizational. Taking up the theme of trust and power, we analyze ways in which the institutionalization of trust can entail that of power, too, and examine the implications of this from a critical point of view.We conclude that in interorganizational trust, both the subject and object of trust move across analytical levels, and further, that this movement demonstrates the significance of the organization as a distinct entity that can be both trusted and trusting.

Looking ‘Beyond the Factory Gates’: Towards more Pluralist and Radical Approaches to Intraorganizational Trust Research

“…Although we acknowledge that individuals can and do exercise a degree of agency over those actions and expectations which constitute relations of trust in organizations, only a few current definitions of intra-organizational trust reflect the institutional embeddedness of workers' trust in their organizations and the power imbalances between workers and their organizations that are often glossed over by exchange theory (e.g. Bachmann, 2001;Möllering, 2005;2006a;Kroeger, 2011). A good example of a definition which takes into account both personal trust and the more diffuse notion of organizational and institutional systems is offered by Grey and Garsten (2001), who see intra-organizational trust as constructed for and by people in organizations and producing some degree of predictability.…”

At the crossroads: Future directions in trust research

“…The interconnectedness of and the dynamics between these two levels are in fact a distinctive feature of institutional-based trust, differentiating it from interaction-based trust, where the institutional level plays no (significant) role, on the one hand, and trust in institutions, where, interestingly, the way institutions do their job is actually also eclipsed. In our view, institutional-based trust develops in concrete relationships between two actors who not only unavoidably orient their behaviour to the relevant institutional arrangements but also enact and constantly reproduce the meaning, power and legitimacy of the institutional order in which their decisions and actions are embedded (Giddens, 1990;Kroeger, 2011). This is what the concept of embeddedness in fact stands for.…”

Local government partnership working: a space odyssey. Or, journeys through the dilemmas of public and private sector boundary-spanning actors

“…Indeed the absence of trust has often been identified as a significant barrier to partnership working (see also Fenwick et al, 2012;Kroeger, 2011). As one of our public sector managers remarked:…”

“…We find precedence for the deployment of Giddens' theory of structuration to analyse public administration phenomena (see for instance Mcleod, 1999;Yun, 2009;Jochoms and Rutgers, 2006), and indeed structuration is used by Kroeger (2011) in his recent examination of interorganizational trust. Whilst maintaining a foundationalist element in its treatment of structure, structuration is an attempt to "bridge the gap between deterministic, objective and static notions of structure on the one hand, and voluntaristic, subjective, and dynamic views on the other" (Ellis and Mayer, 2001: p. 193).…”