The Trouble with Trust: The Dynamics of Interpersonal Trust Building

The Trouble with Trust poses the question: if trust is considered to be important for successful cooperation, why don’t high-trust work relationships predominate? Part of the explanation, the author argues, is that it is particularly difficult to build and maintain trust in work relations. This book addresses this problem by providing an in-depth, multi-level empirical analysis of the process by which trust builds up and breaks down in the interaction between people within organizations.

The author illustrates how trust works as an interactive and asymmetrical process, how trust is built up against the inevitable occurrence of trouble and how organizational policies and settings affect the generation and maintenance of trust. The key argument put forward in this study is that for interpersonal trust to be built in work relations within organizations, both individuals in the relationship need to have their actions guided by a stable normative frame, in other words, they need to want to continue the relationship in the future.

Trust is an important feature of the effective functioning of organizations in all sectors of society and therefore this book will strongly appeal to academics, researchers, students and practitioners with an interest in organizational science, business management and public administration.