"If you thought there was little new to be said on the subject of trust, buy this book and read it. The chapters dealing with trust in hierarchies (leaders, physicians, social workers) and in networks (on-line and geographically disbursed) are especially fresh and important. All the chapters contribute to our appreciation of the pervasive importance of trust in our society and organizations."
-DAVID M. MESSICK, Morris and Alice Kaplan Professor of Ethics and Decision in Management and codirector of the Ford Motor Company Center for Global Citizenship, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
"Trust and Distrust in Organizations is a spectacular collection of contemporary ideas on what social scientists now understand about trust, put together by two outstanding social scientists. The contributing authors are an excellent group of scholars. I valued the useful integrations of different parts of the literature. I found even greater value in the paradoxes and dilemmas that the volume resolved for the reader. This book should be read by any social scientist with a serious interest in trust. More broadly, anyone who wants some tools for understanding the recent disintegration of trust in our society would be well served by starting with a careful read of this book."
-MAX H. BAZERMAN, Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School
"In the last two decades the concept of trust has been seen as an important component of social life, central to understanding how social capital works. Roderick Kramer and Karen Cook, themselves important contributors to this literature, have brought together an outstanding collection of research studies and theoretical analyses that illuminate how trust is built and how it is dissipated. Focusing upon trust in organizations, they examine trust in hierarchical relationships, in teams and groups, and in a variety of organizational contexts. The papers are very well done-a state of the art collection."
-MAYER N. ZALD, professor emeritus, sociology, social work, and business administration, Northwestern University
"This rich volume brings together noted scholars from an array of social science disciplines to examine trust in an intriguing variety of organizational settings, among them doctors and patients, the White House, dispersed work teams, and the internet. The analyses stress the inherent challenges of forging and sustaining trust, offering valuable lessons about both the enduring power and inherent frailty of trusting relations."
- WALTER W. POWELL, professor of education and organizational behavior and sociology, Stanford University
The effective functioning of a democratic society—including social, business, and political interactions—largely depends on trust. Yet trust remains a fragile and elusive resource in many of the organizations that make up society's building blocks. In their timely volume, Trust and Distrust in Organizations, editors Roderick M. Kramer and Karen S. Cook have compiled the most important research on trust in organizations, illuminating the complex nature of how trust develops, functions, and often is thwarted in organizational settings. With contributions from social psychologists, sociologists, political scientists, economists, and organizational theorists, the volume examines trust and distrust within a variety of settings—from employer-employee and doctor-patient relationships, to geographically dispersed work teams and virtual teams on the internet.
Trust and Distrust in Organizations opens with an in-depth examination of hierarchical relationships to determine how trust is established and maintained between people with unequal power. Kurt Dirks and Daniel Skarlicki find that trust between leaders and their followers is established when people perceive a shared background or identity and interact well with their leader. After trust is established, people are willing to assume greater risks and to work harder. In part II, the contributors focus on trust between people in teams and networks. Roxanne Zolin and Pamela Hinds discover that trust is more easily established in geographically dispersed teams when they are able to meet face-to-face initially. Trust and Distrust in Organizations moves on to an examination of how people create and foster trust and of the effects of power and betrayal on trust. Kimberly Elsbach reports that managers achieve trust by demonstrating concern, maintaining open communication, and behaving consistently. The final chapter by Roderick Kramer and Dana Gavrieli includes recently declassified data from secret conversations between President Lyndon Johnson and his advisors that provide a rich window into a leader’s struggles with problems of trust and distrust in his administration.
Broad in scope, Trust and Distrust in Organizations provides a captivating and insightful look at trust, power, and betrayal, and is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the underpinnings of trust within a relationship or an organization.
RODERICK M. KRAMER is the William R. Kimball Professor of Organizational Behavior in the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University.
KAREN S. COOK is Ray Lyman Wilbur Professor of Sociology, Stanford University.
CONTRIBUTORS: John Brehm, Robin M. Cooper, John M. Darley, Kurt T. Dirks, Amy C. Edmondson, Kimberly D. Elsbach, Scott Gates, Dana A. Gavrieli, Pamela J. Hinds, Deepak Malhotra, Bill McEvily, Gary J. Miller, Stefanie Bailey Mollborn, J. Keith Murnighan, Helen Nissenbaum, Hakan Ozcelik, Sandra L. Robinson, Daniel P. Skarlicki, Irena Stepanikova, David H. Thom, J. Mark Weber, Akbar Zaheer, Rozanne Zolin.
A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Series on Trust