What is Enterprise 2.0 Culture? – Trust
“Other things being equal, idiosyncratic exchange which features personal trust will survive greater stress and display greater adaptability” – Williamson (1985)
When I started thinking about this particular area of Enterprise 2.0 recently, I was pretty confused. Trust is such a big unknown. How do you trust someone? Can you trust an organisation? or do you trust the people in the organisation? Can trust be exchanged or transferred? Does the build up of trust related to how desperate the person is (when one is desperate to get something and someone says that they can get it, is the trust given to that person generally higher??) These were some questions I had. Moreover another really tough aspect of trust is that, its very difficult to measure. In this post, I plan to describe what is trust and the key areas Enterprise 2.0 implementers should look at.
So what is trust?
Gambetta defined trust as the subjective probability with which an actor assesses that another actor or group of actors will perform a particular action, both before she or he can monitor such action (or independently of his or her capacity ever to be able to monitor it) and in a context in which it affects his or her own action. Great definition but still quite high level and doesn’t tell us much from here.
At a high level, I would like to say that trust is like a chicken an egg question. When two actors connect and communicate (and even collaborate) some levels of trust must exist in the first place (generally neutral trust). I would like to propose at this point that there is no such thing as no trust for something. There is only negative trust (distrust), neutral trust or positive trust. As communication develops, depending on the situation, a positive relationship will lead to an increase in trust and vice versa.
Adler wrote a really good paper on trust and I am basing much of this blog post on his findings. He argued that there are four dimensions of trust – Sources, Mechanisms, Objects and Bases – Source of trust, mechanisms that generate trust, objects that trust can be built on and bases or factors that trust can be generated from.
| Dimensions | Components |
| Sources | Familiarity through repeated interaction Calculation based on interest Norms that create predictability and trustworthiness |
| Mechanisms | Direct interpersonal contact Reputation Institutional context |
| Objects | Individuals System Collectivities |
| Bases | Consistency, contractual trust Competence Benevolence, loyalty, concern, goodwill, fiduciary trust Honesty, integrity Openness |
To find out more about the details of the above table, I recommend you to read Adler’s work. Note that even though Adler listed the components as individual items the components within each dimension is suggested to be interdependent and intertwined complements.
Here comes the important bit, we can’t assign trust to a person. Trust is earned not given and for people to effectively share and collaborate, positive trust is needed. So does it mean that if people in an organisation has a culture of distrust, Enterprise 2.0 would not work effectively? I would think so – no practical basis for what I said here though.
I believe that trust is not just an Enterprise 2.0 issue, its an organisational issue. If it doesn’t exist within an organisation, it must be looked at from a strategic standpoint and internal HR initiative. With trust, things can work so much better – I’ve been there done that.
John Hovell said,
great stuff, thanks for sharing. personally, i like to read/discuss/reflect on the concepts of appreciation, respect and trust — and how they interact as well. IMHO, enterprise 2.0, along with its approaches/methodologies/concepts, is one of the ways to help facilitate all of these areas…
Sean Lew said,
Thanks John. Absolutely Enterprise 2.0 is well suited for this area of study.
Charles H. Green said,
Sean,
You raise a critical point. It’s hard to overstate the power of trust, and its relevance to organizations, in strategy and economics as well as HR and general effectiveness.
Nothing against Adler, but there’s a far more accessible, concise and business-relevant look at trust. At the risk of appearing self-serving, have a look at http://www.trustedadvisor.com. Some headlines:
–Trust takes two players: one who trusts, and one who is trusted. The latter we evaluate by what we call trustworthiness.
–Trustworthiness can be described in the Trust Equation: (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) / (self-orientation).
–You can take your own TQ (trust quotient) in a self-assessment test taken by over 6,000 people thus far at http://www.trustedadvisor.com/trustquotient
–the fastest way to raise someone else’s trustworthiness is, paradoxically, to trust them
–there is a simple five-step process for the creation of trust in interpersonal interactions in business or life in general, and
–there are four organizational principles designed to increase the level of trust (both trusting and trustworthiness) in organizations,
–for an overview of all these points, see
http://trustedadvisor.com/cgreen.articles/38/Tr...
Sean Lew said,
@Charles, the trust quotient you mentioned is extremely interesting, I did the test personally and felt that it would best work in a peer reviewed environment. Excellent questions and really applicable in the workplace and I agree that its a “accessible, concise and business-relevant look at trust”. The results of this test can be used in many ways. However, understanding trust doesn’t breeds trust and you have covered it well in the The Trust Creation Process. Good work.
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