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. A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Series on Trust

Perspectives from organizational theory, social psychology, sociology and economics are brought together in this volume to provide a broad coverage of trust, including the psychological and social antecedents of trust.

Organizational Trust is a subject which has over the past decade become of increasing importance to organizational theory and research. The book examines what trust is, how it is developed and maintained, its underpinnings, manifestations, and its fragility, through a presentation and discussion of key readings.

The level of trust in an organization's culture will ultimately determine whether or not it is trustful, healthy and successful. This text is based on interviews with chief executive officers from profit and non-profit organizations, who record their experiences in creating trust in their environment and their perceptions of the health of their organizations. The collected data reveals: the qualities of a "trusted" leader; how they created trust or how trust was destroyed in organizations; how leaders worked in distrustful environments; and how to create a more healthy organization.

If trust is sometimes the rational response in interpersonal relations, then it can also be rational to distrust. Indeed, distrust is the preferred response when it protects against harm—as when parents do not entrust the safety of their child to a disreputable caretaker. Liberal political theory was largely founded on distrust of government, and the assumption that government cannot and should not be trusted led the framers of the U.S. constitution to establish a set of institutions explicitly designed to limit government power. With contributions from political science, anthropology, economics, psychology, and philosophy, Distrust examines the complex workings of trust and distrust in personal relationships, groups, and international settings. Edna Ullman-Margalit succinctly defines distrust as the negation of trust, and examines the neutral state between the two responses in interpersonal relations. As Margalit points out, people typically defer judgment—while remaining mildly wary of another's intentions—until specific grounds for trust or distrust become evident. In relations between nations, misplaced trust can lead to grievous harm, so nations may be inclined to act as though they distrust other nations more than they actually do. Editor Russell Hardin observes that the United States and the former Soviet Union secured a kind of institutionalized distrust—through the development of the nuclear deterrent system—that stabilized the relationship between the two countries for four decades. In another realm where distrust plays a prominent role, Margaret Levi, Matthew Moe, and Theresa Buckley show that since the National Labor Relations Board has not been able to overcome distrust between labor unions and employers, it strives to equalize the power held by each group in negotiations. Recapitulating liberal concerns about state power, Patrick Troy argues that citizen distrust keeps government regulation under scrutiny and is more beneficial to the public than unconditional trust. Despite the diversity of contexts examined, the contributors reach remarkably similar conclusions about the important role of trust and distrust in relations between individuals, nations, and citizens and their governments. Distrust makes a significant contribution to the growing field of trust studies and provides a useful guide for further research. A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Series on Trust

A proven model to create high-performing, high-trust organizations Globally, there has been a decline in trust over the past few decades, and only a third of Americans believe they can trust the government, big business, and large institutions. In The Decision to Trust, Robert Hurley explains how this new culture of cynicism and distrust creates many problems, and why it is almost impossible to manage an organization well if its people do not trust one another. High-performing, world-class companies are almost always high-trust environments. Without this elusive, important ingredient, companies cannot attract or retain top talent. In this book, Hurley reveals a new model to measure and repair trust with colleagues managers and employees. Outlines a proven Decision to Trust Model (DTM) of ten factors that establish whether or not one party will trust the other Filled with original examples from Daimler, PriceWaterhouse Coopers, Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, QuikTrip, General Electric, Procter and Gamble, AzKoNobel, Johnson and Johnson, Whole Foods, and Zappos Reveals how leaders in Asia, Europe, and North America have used the DTM to build high-trust organizations Covering trust building in teams, across functions, within organizations and across national cultures, The Decision to Trust shows how any organization can improve trust and the bottom line.

Trust has become a much-discussed, sought-after resource in the current business environment. The contributors to this volume shed new light on the role trust can play in and between organizations.