Our task is to adopt a multidisciplinary view
of trust within and between firms, in an effort to
synthesize and give insight into a fundamental
construct of organizational science. We seek to
identify the shared understandings of trust
across disciplines, while recognizing that the
divergent meanings scholars bring to the study
of trust also can add value.

Not So Different After All: A Cross-Discipline View Of Trust

Scholarly interest in the study of trust and distrust in organizations has grown dramatically over the past five years. This interest has been fueled, at least in part, by accumulating evidence that trust has a number of important benefits for organizations and their members. A primary aim of this review is to assess the state of this rapidly growing literature. The review examines recent progress in conceptualizing trust and distrust in organizational theory, and also summarizes evidence regarding the myriad benefits of trust within organizational systems. The review also describes different forms of trust found in organizations, and the antecedent conditions that produce them. Although the benefits of trust are well-documented, creating and sustaining trust is often difficult. Accordingly, the chapter concludes by examining some of the psychological, social, and institutional barriers to the production of trust. CONTENTS

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TRUST AND DISTRUST IN ORGANIZATIONS: Emerging Perspectives, Enduring Questions

We propose a new theoretical framework for understanding simultaneous trust and distrust within relationships, grounded in assumptions of multidimensionality and the inherent tensions of relationships, and we separate this research from prior work grounded in assumptions of unidimensionality and balance. Drawing foundational support for this new framework from recent research on simultaneous positive and negative sentiments and ambivalence, we explore the theoretical and practical significance of the framework for future work on trust and distrust relationships within organizations.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/259288.pdf

Trust And Distrust: New Relationships and Realities

Extensive empirical evidence and theoretical developments in multiple disciplines stimulate a need to expand the range of rational choice models to be used as a foundation for the study of social dilemmas and collective action. After an introduction to the problem of overcoming social dilemmas through collective action, the remainder of this article is divided into six sections. The first briefly reviews the theoretical predictions of currently accepted rational choice theory related to social dilemmas. The second section summarizes the challenges to the sole reliance on a complete model of rationality presented by extensive experimental research. In the third section, I discuss two major empirical findings that begin to show how individuals achieve results that are “better than rational” by building conditions where reciprocity, reputation, and trust can help to overcome the strong temptations of short-run self-interest. The fourth section raises the possibility of developing second-generation models of rationality, the fifth section develops an initial theoretical scenario, and the final section concludes by examining the implications of placing reciprocity, reputation, and trust at the core of an empirically tested, behavioral theory of collective action.

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A Behavioral Approach to the Rational Choice Theory of Collective Action: Presidential Address, American Political Science Association, 1997

It is widely believed that current disparities in economic, political, and social outcomes reflect distinct institutions. Institutions are invoked to explain why some countries are rich and others poor, some democratic and others dictatorial. But arguments of this sort gloss over the question of what institutions are, how they come about, and why they persist. They also fail to explain why institutions are influenced by the past, why it is that they can sometimes change, why they differ so much from society to society, and why it is hard to study them empirically and devise a policy aimed at altering them. This 2006 book seeks to overcome these problems, which have exercised economists, sociologists, political scientists, and a host of other researchers who use the social sciences to study history, law, and business administration. It presents a multi-disciplinary perspective to study endogenous institutions and their dynamics.

/pdf/institutions-and-the-path-to-the-modern-economy-4dlla029fs.pdf

Institutions and the path to the modern economy

Managerial Dilemmas: The Political Economy of Hierarchy.

List of tables and figures Series editors' preface Acknowledgements Part I. Why Have Hierarchy?: 1. Market failures and hierarchical solutions: the tension between individual and social rationality 2. Bargaining failure: coordination, bargaining, and contracts 3. Voting failure: social choice in a dictatorial hierarchy Part II. Managerial Dilemmas: 4. Horizontal dilemmas: social choice in a decentralised hierarchy 5. Vertical dilemmas: piece-rate incentives and credible commitments 6. Hidden action in hierarchies: principals, agents, and teams 7. Hidden information in hierarchies: the logical limits of mechanism design 8. Hierarchical failures and market solutions: can competition create efficient incentives for managers? Part III. Cooperation and Leadership: 9. The possibilities of cooperation: repeated vertical dilemmas 10. The indeterminacy of cooperation: conventions, culture, and commitments 11. The political economy of hierarchy: commitment, leadership and property rights Epilogue: politics, rationality, and efficiency References Name index Subject index.

Managerial Dilemmas: The Political Economy of Hierarchy

▪ Abstract With tools borrowed from the economic analysis of insurance, principal-agency theory has allowed political scientists new insights into the role of information asymmetry and incentives in political relationships. It has given us a way to think formally about power as the modification of incentives to induce actions in the interests of the principal. Principal-agency theory has evolved significantly as political scientists have sought to make it more applicable to peculiarly political institutions. In congressional oversight of the bureaucracy, increasing emphasis has been placed on negotiation of administrative procedures, rather than the imposition of outcome-based incentives, as originally conceived. Awareness of the problem of credible commitment has impelled more dramatic reformulations, in which agents perform their function only when their interests conflict with those of the principal, and they are guaranteed some degree of autonomy. The ‘political master’ finds himself in the position o...

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.polisci.8.082103.104840

The political evolution of principal-agent models

Sleep apnea syndrome in chronic renal disease

While some argue that incomplete incentive contracts facilitate the self-enforcement of informal dealings, other authors submit that they substitute for or "crowd out" social norms supporting informal arrangements. We use experimental evidence to test these theories by manipulating the extent to which individuals transact repeatedly and the level of contract costs. We find that, by enforcing contractible exchange dimensions, contracts facilitate the self-enforcement of non-contractible dimensions. This complementarity effect is particularly important when repetition is unlikely and thus self-enforcement is difficult. Although our data suggest the existence of reciprocity as an alternative, informal enforcement mechanism, evidence that contracts substitute for this social norm is not robust.

Gary J. Miller

Papers

Managerial Dilemmas: The Political Economy of Hierarchy.

Managerial Dilemmas: The Political Economy of Hierarchy

The political evolution of principal-agent models

Sleep apnea syndrome in chronic renal disease

Order with Some Law: Complementarity vs. Substitution of Formal and Informal Arrangements