The foundations of trust
By Patricia Galliford
Our CEO Forum on 15 August 2024 dived into the wisdom of seasoned public purpose leaders about the importance of trust to partnerships between government, community and stakeholders (see our analysis – Towards Trust in Government).
But what is trust?
Five letters that carry significant weight to several contexts that circulate our personal and professional spheres.
Because of the pervasiveness of trust and how it permeates our day-to-day existence both at home and at work, the literature on this topic is as deep as it is wide. Too wide to cover here, but what we can share are some insights into the foundations of trust.
Before we delve into how trust relates to institutions it is worth visiting the fundamentals and understand how the literature defines ‘trust’ in its most basic form.
How is trust defined?
Trust is defined as “the willingness to be vulnerable to the discretionary actions of another party” (Pirson & Malhotra, 2011).
Trust is a multi-faceted construct comprising cognitive, affective, behavioural, and ethical components (Lewicki & Brinsfield, 2012, p. 37 as cited in Mishra & Mishra, 2013) and is considered to be an essential ingredient for not only organizations, but people, to thrive (Cunha Filho, 2022).
Trust at its core – bears benefits and risks (Posten & Mussweiler, 2019).
Trust is seen to achieve or progress several different agendas…from:
- Enabling organizational success
- Facilitating efficient business transactions with heightened positive relationships
- Increasing customer satisfaction
- Enhances employee motivation and commitment
- Promoting cooperative within organizations
- Fosters creativity, innovation and knowledge transfer with a broad range of stakeholders (Pirson & Malhotra, 2011).
Ultimately, trust is seen to be the most important ingredient for the development and maintenance of well-functioning relationships and entails beliefs and attitudes about the degree to which people are likely to be reliable, cooperative or helpful (Simpson, 2007).
Trust is also seen as more than simple behaviour – but more a disposition – consisting of actions that seeks to alleviate one’s fear that an exchange partner will act opportunistically (Nooteboom, 2007) with people making predictions based on minimal, novel, or even contradicting pieces of information that they encounter during ad hoc interactions (Posten & Mussweiler, 2019).
It is about understanding the interplay of vulnerability, and reliability; and, operating with a sense of integrity and competence. Attributes that are as relevant to our interpersonal relationships to the relationship an institution has with its citizenry.
What about institutions?
Trust can take different forms in different relationships.
Trust in government and in public institutions, as well as trust between citizens is considered to be vital to the successful implementation of public policies, for the overall economic improvement of a country, and even for the improvement of the quality of life of a country’s citizens in a global sense (Cunha Filho, 2022).
Institutional trust is also closely tied to information sharing.
An emerging government role is focusing on providing access to information that fosters market transparency and efficiency. Disclosing information through open government initiatives is helpful, but may not automatically lead to informed decisions, nor lead to increased trust from the community. This reality notwithstanding, the disclosure of information should be considered an important factor by an institution in fostering trust with its people (Zhang et al, 2016, (Cunha Filho, 2022).
Further, sustainable institutional trust rests on the availability and credibility of information that can be tracked through the entire institution, with smart disclosure fostering the development of tools and applications to reduce complexity and information overload, and facilitate better decision making (Zhang et al, 2016).
At an institutional level, trust is seen as a key mechanism for reducing social complexity (Möllering et al, 2004). As stated in Fuglsang & Jagd, sensemaking is a social skill, relating to people’s interests and identities. Sensemaking stresses how actors relate to the environment and reproduce institutional features of trust in an appropriate way (Fuglsang & Jagd, 2015).
As such, sensemaking is intimately intertwined with institutional trust through the lens of introducing mechanisms shaping an individuals perception and degree of trust with an institution.
The better an institution is at communication and breaking down complexity, the stronger the likelihood that trust will be fostered and maintained.
However, it needs to be noted that at an institutional level, it is not necessarily possible to create trust, but rather create mechanisms to deal with its absence. Mechanisms such as rules, procedure, laws, regulations etcetera – all seek to create a social structure where expectations are set as to what is deemed acceptable and expected by all players within a system (Cunha Filho, 2022).
It is anticipated by a citizenry that the mere presence of these mechanisms is sufficient to some degree in fostering trust, but there are assumptions being made that the mechanisms will create the intended behaviours of others – which may or may not always be the case (Cunha Filho, 2022).
In the end, it is about the delivery of information, the breaking down of complexity, and the introduction of effective mechanisms by an institution that work together to create a foundation of solid trust.
What about an individual leaders and trust…?
The nature of individual actions cannot be ignored when it comes to trust – particularly when considering the nature and presence of trust at an institutional level.
Researchers have noted that trust is a key component of leadership and influence, and facilitated through reputation, systems of power, the use of hierarchy, norms and more (Cunha Filho, 2022).
Trust in this context is based on a community’s perception of a leader’s ability, benevolence and integrity (Mishra & Mishra, 2013, Qian & Adali, 2014, Castelnovo et al, 2023). These attributes tie in closely to those held in high regard to leaders such as Warren Buffet – whose attributes of intelligence, integrity and energy sit at the core of those who he interacts and transacts with (Miller, 2016).
At IPAA, there is an ongoing conversation had with public sector leaders regarding the qualities of good leaders, and while there is a laundry list of attributes that ‘good’ leaders in the sector should hold, or at least seek to cultivate; but in the end, the attributes are less important than their ability to do the job that the sector asks of them, their ability behave in a way that is well-intentioned, and if they do what they say they will do.
Ultimately, trust is based on integrity and expectation management.
If expectations are met, reputations are built, and trust is solidified.
If expectations are not met, frustrations are built and trust is compromised.
Building trust is to put faith in the unknown and possible – and to be vulnerable to the intentions and actions of others.
Building trust relies on being reliable.
What is your perspective on trust?
Other Interesting sources about Trust:
World Values Survey – WVS Database (worldvaluessurvey.org) WVS Database (worldvaluessurvey.org)
References:
Castelnovo, O., Popper, M., & Koren, D. (2023). The foundation of trust and its connection to leadership, charisma attributions, self-efficacy, and motivation. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603124.2023.2298206
Cunha Filho, M. de C. (2022). Institutional Foundations of Trust: Sociolegal Perspectives. Revista Direito e Práxis, 13(3), 1706–1735. https://doi.org/10.1590/2179-8966/2021/57080
Fuglsang, L., & Jagd, S. (2015). Making sense of institutional trust in organizations: Bridging institutional context and trust. Organization (London, England), 22(1), 23–39. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508413496577
Lewicki , R. J. and Brinsfield , C. 2012 . “ Measuring trust beliefs and behaviours ” . In Handbook of trust research , Edited by: Lyon , F. , Mollering , G. and Saunders , M. N. K. 29 – 39 . Northampton , MA : Edward Elgar.
Miller, J. C., & Perkins, T. (2016). Warren Buffett’s ground rules: Words of wisdom from the partnership letters of the world’s greatest investor. Unabridged.
Mishra, A. K., & Mishra, K. E. (2013). The research on trust in leadership: The need for context. Journal of Trust Research, 3(1), 59–69. https://doi.org/10.1080/21515581.2013.771507
Möllering, G., Bachmann, R., & Hee Lee, S. (2004). Introduction: Understanding organizational trust – foundations, constellations, and issues of operationalisation. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 19(6), 556–570. https://doi.org/10.1108/02683940410551480
Nooteboom, B. (2007). Social capital, institutions and trust. Review of Social Economy, 65(1), 29–53. https://doi.org/10.1080/00346760601132154
Pirson, M., Malhotra, D. (2010) Foundations of Organizational Trust: What Matters to Different Stakeholders?. Organization Science 22(4):1087-1104.
Posten, A.-C., & Mussweiler, T. (2019). Egocentric foundations of trust. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 84, 103820-. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2019.103820
Qian, Y., & Adali, S. (2014). Foundations of trust and distrust in networks: Extended structural balance theory. ACM Transactions on the Web, 8(3), 1–33. https://doi.org/10.1145/2628438
Simpson, J. A. (2007). Psychological Foundations of Trust. Current Directions in Psychological Science : A Journal of the American Psychological Society, 16(5), 264–268. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2007.00517.x
Zhang, J., Liu, H., Sayogo, D. S., Picazo-Vela, S., & Luna-Reyes, L. (2016). Strengthening institutional-based trust for sustainable consumption: Lessons for smart disclosure. Government Information Quarterly, 33(3), 552–561. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2016.01.009