Trust in managerial relationships

Journal of Managerial Psychology - Tập 18 Số 4 - Trang 282-304 - 2003
SallyAtkinson1, DavidButcher1
1Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield, UK

Tóm tắt

Despite significant theoretical work over the past decade, the phenomenon of trust and the process of its development in managerial relationships remain elusive in theory and practice. This paper revisits theories that frame trust development in order to explore the development of trust in the specific social context of managerial relationships. Managerial relationships are often characterised by politics and the pursuit of hidden agendas and self‐interest. Competing perspectives and personal motivations can conspire to render even the most innocent of acts subject to scrutiny and suspicion. In these senses, high levels of trust are not commensurate with ideal conditions for managerial effectiveness. Examines the realistic possibilities for trust development set in the context of managerial relationships, and in the process of this analysis, creates a set of propositions that could inform further theory development and empirical investigation of the area.

Từ khóa


Tài liệu tham khảo

Aulakh, P., Kotabe, M. and Sahay, A. (1997), “Trust and performance in cross‐border marketing partnerships”, in Beamish, P. and Killing, J. (Eds), Cooperative Strategies, Vol 1: North American Perspectives, New Lexington Press, San Francisco, CA, pp. 163–96.

Barber, B. (1983), The Logic and Limits of Trust, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ.

Barnard, C. (1938), The Functions of the Executive, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

Bhattacharya, R., Devinney, T. and Pillutla, M. (1998), “A formal model of trust based on outcomes”, (Special Topic Forum on Trust in and Between Organizations), Academy of Management Review, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 459–73.

Bigley, G. and Pearce, J. (1998), “Straining for shared meaning in organization science: problems of trust and distrust”, (Special Topic Forum on Trust in and between Organizations), Academy of Management Review, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 405–22.

Blau, P. (1964), Exchange and Power in Social Life, John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY.

Blois, K. (1999), “Trust in business to business relationships”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 197–215.

Bower, A., Garber, S. and Watson, J. (1996), “Learning about a population of agents and the evolution of trust and cooperation”, International Journal of Industrial Organization, Vol. 15, pp. 165–90.

Brockner, J., Siegel, P., Daly, J., Tyler, T. and Martin, C. (1997), “When trust matters: the moderating effect of outcome favorability”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 42, pp. 558–83.

Buchanan, D. and Badham, R. (1999), Power, Politics and Organizational Change: Winning the Turf Game, Sage Publications, London.

Burt, R. and Knez, M. (1996), “Trust and third‐party gossip”, in Kramer, T. and Tyler, R. (Eds), Trust in Organizations: Frontiers of Theory and Research, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 68–89.

Butcher, D. and Atkinson, S. (2001), “Stealth, secrecy and subversion: the language of change”, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 14 No. 6, pp. 554–69.

Butcher, D. and Clarke, M. (2001), Smart Management: Using Politics in Organizations, Palgrave, Aldershot.

Butler, J. (1991), “Towards understanding and measuring conditions of trust: evolution of a conditions of trust inventory”, Journal of Management, Vol. 17 No. 3, pp. 643–63.

Carney, M. (1998), “The competitiveness of networked production: the role of trust and asset specificity”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 35 No. 4, pp. 457–80, (Special Issue on the Sustainability of New Organizational Arrangements).

Chung, S., Singh, H. and Lee, K. (2000), “Complementarity, status similarity, and social capital as drivers of alliance formation”, Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 21, pp. 1–22.

Clegg, S. (1999), “Globalizing the intelligent organization: learning organizations, smart workers, (not so) clever countries and the sociological imagination”, Management Learning, Vol. 30 No. 3, pp. 259–80.

Cohen, S.G. and Mankin, D. (2002), “Complex collaborations in the new global economy”, Organisational Dynamics, Vol. 31 No. 2, pp. 117–33.

Coopey, J., Keegan, O. and Emler, N. (1998), “Managers’ innovations and the structuration of organizations”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 35 No. 3, pp. 263–85.

Creed, W.E.D. and Miles, R.E. (1996), “Trust in organizations: a conceptual framework linking organizational forms, managerial philosophies, and the opportunity costs of controls”, in Kramer, T. and Tyler, R. (Eds), Trust in Organizations: Frontiers of Theory and Research, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 16–38.

Culbert, S. and McDonough, J. (1985), Radical Management: Power Politics and the Pursuit of Trust, The Free Press, New York, NY.

Daft, R.L. and Lewin, A.Y. (1993), “What are the theories for the ‘new’ organizational forms? An editorial essay”, Organizational Science, Vol. 4, pp. i–vi.

Daley, D. and Vasu, M. (1998), “Fostering organizational trust in North Carolina: the pivotal role of administrators and political leaders”, Administration and Society, Vol. 30 No. 1, pp. 62–85.

Das, T. and Teng, B‐S. (1998), “Between trust and control: developing confidence in partner cooperation in alliances”, (Special Topic Forum on Trust in and between Organizations), Academy of Management Review, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 491–513.

Dasgupta, P. (1988), “Trust as a commodity”, in Gambetta, D. (Ed.), Trust: Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 49–72.

Davis, J., Schoorman, D., Mayer, R. and Tan, H. (2000), “The trusted general manager and business unit performance: empirical evidence of a competitive advantage”, Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 21, pp. 563–76.

Dibben, M. (2000), Exploring Trust in the Entrepreneurial Venture, Macmillan Business, Basingstoke.

Doney, P. and Cannon, J. (1997), “An examination of the nature of trust in buyer‐seller relationships”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 61 No. 2, pp. 35–52.

Doney, P., Cannon, J. and Mullen, M. (1998), “Understanding the influence of national culture on the development of trust”, (Special Topic Forum on Trust in and Between Organizations), Academy of Management Review, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 601–21.

Dunn, J. (1988), “Trust and political agency”, in Gambetta, D. (Ed.), Trust: Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 73–93.

Elsbach, K. and Elofson, G. (2000), “How the packaging of decision explanations affects perceptions of trustworthiness”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 43 No. 1, pp. 80–9.

Emerson, R. (1992), “Social exchange theory”, in Rosenberg, M. and Turner, R. (Eds), Social Psychology – Sociological Perspectives, Transaction Publishers, Piscataway, NJ, pp. 31–65.

Ferris, G., Perrewe, P., Anthony, A. and Gilmore, D. (2000), “Political skill at work”, Organizational Dynamics, Vol. 28 No. 4, pp. 25–37.

Fisher, R. and Ury, W. (1981), Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement without Giving in, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA.

Fletcher, G. and Simpson, J. (2001), “Ideal standards in close relationships”, in Forgas, J. , Williams, K. and Wheeler, L. (Eds), The Social Mind: Cognitive and Motivational Aspects of Interpersonal Behavior, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 257–73.

Fukuyama, F. (1995), Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, The Free Press, New York, NY.

Gersick, C., Bartunek, J. and Dutton, J. (2000), “Learning from academia: the importance of relationships in professional life”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 43 No. 6, pp. 1026–44.

Glaeser, E., Laibson, D., Scheinkman, J. and Soutter, C. (2000), “Measuring trust”, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 115 No. 3, pp. 811–37.

Govier, T. (1993), “An epistemology of trust”, International Journal of Moral and Social Studies, Vol. 8 No. 2, pp. 155–74.

Granovetter, M. (1985), “Economic action and social structure: the problem of embeddedness”, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 91, pp. 481–510.

Gulati, R. (1995), “Does familiarity breed trust? The implications of repeated ties for contractual choice in alliances”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 38 No. 1, pp. 85–113.

Harrison, R., Dibben, M. and Mason, C. (1997), “The role of trust in the informal investor's investment decision: an exploratory analysis”, Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice, Vol. 21 No. 4, pp. 63–82.

Hogg, M. (2001), “Social categorization and uncertainty reduction”, in Forgas, J. , Williams, K. and Wheeler, L. (Eds), The Social Mind: Cognitive and Motivational Aspects of Interpersonal Behavior, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 323–49.

Holmes, J. (1991), “Trust and the appraisal process in close relationships”, in Jones, W.H. and Perlman, D. (Eds), Advances in Personal Relationships, Vol. 2, Jessica Kingsley, London, pp. 57–104.

Hosmer, L. (1995), “Trust: the connecting link between organizational theory and philosophical ethics”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 20 No. 2, pp. 379–404.

Hwang, P. and Burgers, W. (1997), “Properties of trust: an analytical view”, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Vol. 69 No. 1, pp. 67–73.

Iacobucci, D. and Ostrom, A. (1996), “Commercial and interpersonal relationships: using the structure of interpersonal relationships to understand individual‐to‐individual, individual‐to‐firm, and firm‐to‐firm relationships in commerce”, International Journal of Research in Marketing, pp. 53–72.

Jeffries, F. and Reed, R. (2000), “Trust and adaptation in relational contracting”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 25 No. 4, pp. 873–90.

Knee, C.R. (1998), “Implicit theories of relationships: assessment and prediction of romantic relationship initiation, coping and longevity”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 72 No. 2, pp. 360–70.

Korczynski, M. (2000), “The political economy of trust”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 37 No. 1, pp. 1–21.

Korsgaard, M., Schweiger, D. and Sapienza, H. (1995), “Building commitment, attachment, and trust in strategic decision‐making”, (Special Forum on Intra and Interorganizational Cooperation), Academy of Management Review, Vol. 38 No. 1, pp. 60–85.

Kramer, R. (1994), “The sinister attribution error: paranoid cognition and collective distrust in organizations”, Motivation and Emotion, Vol. 18, pp. 199–230.

Kramer, R. (1996), “Divergent realities and convergent disappointments in the hierarchic relation: trust and the intuitive auditor at work”, in Kramer, T. and Tyler, R. (Eds), Trust in Organizations: Frontiers of Theory and Research, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 216–45.

Kramer, R. (1999), “Trust and distrust in organizations: emerging perspectives, enduring questions”, Annual Review of Psychology, Vol. 50, pp. 569–98.

Leana, C. and Van Buren, H. (1999), “Organizational social capital and employment practices”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 24 No. 3, pp. 538–55.

Lewicki, R. and Bunker, B. (1996), “Developing and maintaining trust in work relationships”, in Kramer, R.M. and Tyler, T. (Eds), Trust in Organizations: Frontiers of Theory and Research, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 114–39.

Lewicki, R., McAllister, D. and Bies, R. (1998), “Trust and distrust: new relationships and realities”, (Special Topic Forum on Trust in and between Organizations), Academy of Management Review, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 438–59.

Lewis, J. and Weigert, A. (1985), “Trust as a social reality”, Social Forces, Vol. 63, pp. 967–85.

Lorenz, E.H. (1988), “Neither friends nor strangers: informal networks of subcontracting in French industry”, in Gambetta, D. (Ed.), Trust: Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 194–210.

Luhmann, N. (1979), Trust and Power, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester.

Luhmann, N. (1988), “Familiarity, confidence, trust: problems and alternatives”, in Gambetta, D. (Ed.), Trust: Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 94–108.

McAllister, D. (1995), “Affect and cognition‐based trust as foundation for interpersonal cooperation in organizations”, (Special Forum on Intra and Interorganizational Cooperation), Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 38 No. 1, pp. 24–59.

McKnight, D. and Chervany, N. (1996), The Meanings of Trust, Working Paper 96‐04 Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota.

McKnight, D., Cummings, L. and Chervany, N. (1998), “Initial trust formation in new organizational relationships”, (Special Topic Forum on Trust in and between Organizations), Academy of Management Review, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 473–91.

Macy, M. and Skvoretz, J. (1998), “The evolution of trust and cooperation between strangers: a computational model”, American Sociological Review, Vol. 63, pp. 638–60.

Mayer, R., Davis, J. and Schoorman, F. (1995), “An integrative model of organizational trust”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 20 No. 3, pp. 709–34.

Mead, G. (1934), Mind, Self and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL.

Meyerson, D., Weick, K. and Kramer, R. (1996), “Swift trust and temporary groups”, in Kramer, R.M. and Tyler, T.R. (Eds), Trust in Organizations: Frontiers of Theory and Research, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA,, pp. 166–95.

Mishra. A. (1993), Breaking down organizational boundaries during crisis: the role of mutual trust, paper presented at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management, Atlanta, GA, August.

Mishra, A. and Morrisey, M. (1990), “Trust in employee/employer relationships: a survey of West Michigan managers”, Public Personnel Management, Vol. 19 No. 4, pp. 443–63.

Molm, L., Takahashi, N. and Peterson, G. (2000), “Risk and trust in social exchange: an experimental test of a classical proposition”, The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 105 No. 5, pp. 1396–430.

Montgomery, J. (1998), “Toward a role‐theoretic conception of embeddedness”, The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 104 No. 1, pp. 92–126.

Newell, S. and Swan, J. (2000), “Trust and inter‐organizational networking”, Human Relations, Vol. 53 No. 10, pp. 1287–309.

Norris, S. and Zweigenhaft, R. (1999), “Self‐monitoring, trust, and commitment in romantic relationships”, The Journal of Social Psychology, Vol. 139 No. 2, pp. 215–21.

Parkhe, A. (1998), “Understanding trust in international alliances”, Journal of World Business, Vol. 33 No. 3, pp. 219–32.

Powell, W.W. (1996), “Trust‐based forms of governance”, in Kramer, R.M. and Tyler, T.R. (Eds), Trust in Organizations: Frontiers of Theory and Research, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 51–67.

Seligman, A. (1998), “Trust and sociability: on the limits of confidence and role expectations”, (Special Invited Issue: Money, Trust, Speculation and Social Justice), American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 57 No. 4, pp. 391–401.

Shapiro, S. (1987), “The social control of interpersonal trust”, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 93 No. 3, pp. 623–58.

Sheppard, B.H. and Sherman, D.M. (1998), “The grammars of trust: a model and general implications”, (Special Topic Forum on Trust in and between Organizations), Academy of Management Review, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 422–38.

Sheppard, B.H. and Tuchinsky, M. (1996), “Micro OB and the network organization”, in Kramer, R.M. and Tyler, T.R. (Eds), Trust in Organizations: Frontiers of Theory and Research, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 140–65.

Sillars, A. (1984), “Interpersonal perception in relationships”, in Ickes, W. (Ed.), Compatible and Incompatible Relationships, Springer‐Verlag, New York, NY, pp. 277–305.

Simons, T. and Peterson, R. (2000), “Task conflict and relationship conflict in top management teams: the pivotal role of intragroup trust”, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 85 No. 1, pp. 102–11.

Sitkin, S. and Roth, N. (1993), “Explaining the limited effectiveness of legalistic ‘remedies’ for trust/distrust”, Organization Science, Vol. 4 No. 3, pp. 367–92.

Spreitzer, G.M. and Mishra, A.K. (1999), “Giving up control without losing control: trust and its substitute's effects on managers’ involving employees in decision making”, Group and Organization Management, Vol. 24 No. 2, pp. 155–87.

Strong, K. and Weber, J. (1998), “The myth of the trusting culture: a global, empirical assessment”, Business and Society, Vol. 37 No. 2, pp. 157–84.

Tonkiss, F. and Passey, A. (1999), “Trust, confidence and voluntary organizations: between values and institutions”, Sociology, Vol. 33 No. 2, pp. 257–89.

Tsai, W. and Ghoshal, S. (1998), “Social capital and value creation: the role of intrafirm networks”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 41 No. 4, pp. 464–77.

Tyler, T. and Kramer, R. (1996), “Whither trust?”, in Kramer, R.M. and Tyler, T.R. (Eds), Trust in Organizations: Frontiers of Theory and Research, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 1–15.

Uzzi, B. (1997), “Social structure and competition in interfirm networks: the paradox of embeddedness”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 42 No. 1, pp. 35–68.

Whitener, E., Brodt, S., Korsgaard, M. and Werner, J. (1998), “Managers as initiators of trust: an exchange relationship framework for understanding managerial trustworthy behaviour”, (Special Topic Forum on Trust in and between Organizations), Academy of Management Review, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 513–31.

Wicks, A., Berman, S. and Jones, T. (1999), “The structure of optimal trust: moral and strategic implications”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 24 No. 1, pp. 99–116.

Wittgenstein, L. (1958), Philosophical Investigations, trans. by Anscombe, G., Blackwell, Oxford.

Zaheer, A. and Venkatraman, N. (1995), “Relational governance as an interorganizational strategy: an empirical test of the role of trust in economic exchange”, Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 16, pp. 373–92.

Zand, D. (1997), The Leadership Triad: Knowledge, Trust, and Power, Oxford University Press, New York, NY.