I think that it depends on what you mean by 'managed'. On the 'trustor' side, I think that one can try to improve the trust estimation mechanism (whether this exists) and this can lead to a management of the way trust is placed in agents or information. On the 'trustee' side, one could try to improve his/her ability to signal his/her trustworthiness, and this would be again, a kind of 'trust management'. However, potentially, it is a very broad question.

Thank you for your prompt response, Davide. Yes, emphasising the would-be trustee side it appears to me that a lot of money & effort is invested in how to be perceived as trustworthy: e.g. as a business, political or team leader; as a commercial website competing in a crowded market. Conversely, a lot of money & effort is invested in understanding how people might be persuaded to trust this or that person or product: i.e. perceive this or that person or product as 'trustworthy'. (Ethical issues arise here, that, for example, marketers and political communications experts might admit to).

I'm curious about how we as management researchers and practitioners conceptualise trust as a precursor for discussing it, hence the broad sweep of my initial question. Thank you again for your response.

Yes trust can be managed. What is necessary is a simple and useful definition of trust. Trust is the readiness for unguarded interaction with someone or something. A simple model of trust that breaks trust down into three dimensions allows the internal/external consultant to intervene and actually improve trust. Complex models are great for intellectual exercises but are easily forgotten and difficult to remember for line and upper management. My research has shown that the model is intuitive to a wide range of people from a wide range of organizations.

There are a number of statements about trust that are taken to be true but that are not. For example, trustworthy (worthy of trust) is a meaningless term when it is considered that no action one can take will convince those who don't want to trust you to do so. I prefer the term "trustable," which allows one to do things, like being truthful, consistent, humble, and do forth. Another example is that trust is hard to establish but easy to lose. In reality, trust can easily be re-established because people instinctively want to trust. If you and John agree to meet for lunch, and John is trustable, you know what will happen at noon. If John always show up late, the situation is a bit more complex: how late, why no cellphone call, how long do you wait, as so on? If you don't know that John may not show up in a hockey mask with a chainsaw, things are exceptionally complex. People prefer simplicity to complexity, so instinctively want to trust.

What you actually manage is your response to your level of trust towards another person, not the actual trust itself. This is because as trust increases, there is a natural tendency to allow oneself to become more vulnerable to betrayal. The question is: is one optimistic enough to allow oneself to be exposed to more vulnerability inexchange for more efficiency, synergy, and closeness?

We must remember that trust is an emotion, much like love, happiness, sadness, or anger. It happens naturally and unconsciously, and is cultivated by analyzing observations (direct or indirect) with respect to one's personal values and expectations. The value of trust is that it helps to reduce the complexities of expectations in arbitrary situations that involve risk, vulnerabiliy, and interdependence.

Hello Dariusz,

Hello Duane,

Thank you both for your insightful and perception comments and observations.

My understanding of the research literature suggests that there is no one clear definition of what trust 'is'.

One interpretation that I find practically and conceptually useful is to regard trust - or, perhaps more precisely, the human propensity to engage in trusting behaviour - as part expression of a survival instinct that becomes honed through each individual's experiences of socialisation: e.g. through family, education, employment, society, and in life generally.

From a management perspective we could talk (in theory) of influencing people's perceptions: e.g. of what or who appears more or less trustworthy.

This sounds like a fundamental 'opportunity' for marketing communicators.

Furthermore, I think this emphasis on managing (manipulating?) people's perceptions helps explain why so much funding in trust research currently goes into e-commerce: e.g. 'most trusted' commercial websites, etc.

What do you think, guys?

Best wishes

Keith

Yes, there is no accepted definition for trust. That said, most philosophers tend to agree that you need (a) a willingness to accept risk, (b) optimism towards a person, and (c) a belief that the person is capable to do a particular task/action.

It is pretty well established that trust is cultivated through observations, either direct or indirect (recommendations). As such, there is a lot of motive to project a perception to others that favorably benefits trust cultivation, regardless of whether or not you're trying to sell some good or service. If it is the case that most trust research deals with e-commerce, then I would only suspect that this is because there is probably a lot of good, usable data to do objective scientific studies on this subject, which usually tends to live in the realm of subjectivity.

Hello & many thanks for your prompt response, Dariusz.

Yes, I agree with your approach, and with your 'suspicion' about the motives behind much funding into trust research.

Your definition of the concept reminds me of that proposed by Bannerjee et al in Bachmann & Zaheer's recent 'Handbook of Trust Research' (2006). There, Bannerjee and colleagues emphasise context in order to identify three 'necessary conditions for trust' in the formation of social and business relationships; namely (and paraphrasing):

• Interdependence: at least one party in a trust relationship must be dependent on at least one other party in order to accomplish a goal

• Vulnerability: at least one party in the trust relationship is vulnerable to the opportunistic attitudes behaviour of another party in the relationship

• Risk: as a result of this vulnerability, the interests of at least one party to the relationship are at risk

Correspondingly, in my own PhD research I tried to develop a cross-cultural / international HRM perspective on 'trust in psychological contracts'.

What's your specific interest in 'trust'?

Best wishes

Keith

Hi Keith,

Yes, I agree with your necessary conditions, provided that they are shared between both parties. A battered and abused woman, for example, may be in a relationship where she is dependent on her man, vulnerable to his opportunistic attitudes, and frequently in high risk scenarios - and yet, I doubt trust could be cultivated in such a relationship.

My interest in trust started when I was looking for a PhD topic in 2010. I work with robots, and thought that perhaps I could improve the decision making capabilities in robot teams if the robots knew which teammates they could trust to execute different team strategies. What resulted was a new cooperative game theoretic framework for studying coalition formation through trust-based interactions. This, then, eventually led to me developing a new mathematical trust model, which I named 'RoboTrust', which I can use to calculate trustworthiness. If you'd like to read about all of this, just go to my RG profile - all of my papers are there for download.

What do you mean by "HRM perspective"?

Hello Dariusz,

Many thanks for your response. My apologies for the delay in getting back to you: I've been travelling intensively on business recently.

Your research field sounds fascinating, at first a little baffling (robots + trust?) and simultaneously very relevant and future oriented.

You ask about what i mean by 'HRM perspective'. I'm suggesting here that HR managers and their organisations should try to develop a rational understanding of trust and ask what they can do (for example) to avoid unplanned breaches of trust (i.e. as perceived from the employee perspective) and hence unplanned employee neglect of performance and / or intention to quit.

As common to such rational / calculative attempts to reduce a deeply complex concept to what appears to be a 'manageable' form (cf. 'models' of trust such as ABI) we risk losing much that is essential to how people experience 'trust' and egage in trusting / untrusting behaviours.

We are reminded that management / HRM models tend to be strong on assumed causality and weak in terms of context-specific depth.

However, my hope here is that we can guide HR and other managers to becoming more competent and confident in how they inform their decisions and other interventions with reference to trust: a process in practice and research of 'damage limitation' while we continue to look for more reliable interpretations of 'trust'.

Work that you, Dariusz, and colleagues in your field are doing can help us HRM specialists towards this objective.

Many thanks again for sharing your thoughts & insights.

With best wishes

Keith

Keith: From what I learned from my research, it seems to me that helping employees develop a tolerance for negative experiences would be extremely helpful for an employer. How this tolerance is developed is not something I can really comment on, as this isn't my field of expertise - but I can speculate that having fair, simple, and speedy methods to resolve conflicts would go a long way.

Thank you, Dariusz.

Once again I agree with you entirely from the employee perspective.

But surely managers / superiors are tasked to define themselves to the extent that 'their' employees are not required to be 'tolerant' without limit of management styles that are perceived to threaten perceptions of trustworthiness.

In organisational contexts, those with more power & influence have the option of learning from their 'mistakes'. Those with less power and influence are commonly sacked or demoted for one 'mistake'.

In short, we should recognise that the 'vulnerability' condition for trusting behaviour is frequently one-sided and thus (in practical terms) 'reciprocal' / mutual only to a degree that is allowed by more powerful members of the organisation .

Best wishes

Keith