Seeing Trust Beside

Strategic thinking requires, according to Mintzberg (1991), creativity. Because thinking creatively has been referred to as lateral thinking, Mintzberg names it seeing beside. Seeing beside in strategic thinking demands understanding the types of various relationships and networks, both inside and between organizations. Further, when we consider trust in relations and networks we face, in addition to various benefits and advantages received from collaboration and networks, there are questions about interpretation and power. Nooteboom (2002) refers to the interpretative nature of trust. According to him, the most important thing is not what happens in relationships but how that is interpreted, and how people infer and attribute competencies and motives to people that matters. Interpretation plays a crucial role in the formation or destruction of trust.

Dyer (2000) presents a concept of collaborative advance that is based on his study of the automotive industry. He states that in the future competitive advantage will increasingly be created by teams of companies, rather than by single firms, because single firms will simply be unable to amass the resources and knowledge required. Similarly, inside one organization, networks will produce remarkable advantages because inside one organization one person simply is unable to know everything. The role of various relations and networks in knowledge-based organizations has been considered in more detail else-where in this book (Huotari & Iivonen, 2003).

Although collaboration and networks within an organization produce remarkable benefits, social networks also have negative sides. Nooteboom (2002) presents that networks are not only for the production of social capital, but for the production of social liability. On one hand, they can create an obstacle to change, learning and innovations. On the other hand, social networks may also lead to great consensus, which leads to group thinking that blocks the creativity produced by different opinions. This might happen equally in coffee rooms and official meetings. According to Nooteboom (2002), the lack of learning and the lack of flexibility in network configurations are particularly serious under conditions of radical changes. The important question is how to change and break up those networks, which are harmful and weaken the work community. Similarly, as destructive tacit knowledge, destructive social networks should also be made visible. Further, the effects of such networks should be openly discussed, as well as the positive alternatives that should be produced.

Trust can be built by developing shared meaning and building common ground. According to Hardy et al. (1998), trust arises as a result of reciprocal communicative processes through which meaning is shared. There are situations of spontaneous trust where shared meaning already exists between partners, but there are also situations where trust can be generated with communicative processes. In these situations, shared meaning is mutually constructed by all partners. Hardy et al. (1998) remark that the process of creating shared meaning may also involve conflict, which should not be rejected because it may be a sign that all partners are contributing to the creation of shared meaning on the basis of power balance.

Trust building through the communicative process needs at least some amount of common ground because without it, it is difficult for participants to understand each other. Common ground does not include only common language, but also common knowledge and, more important, a context where they know that they have the common knowledge. (Davenport & Prusak, 1998; Devlin, 1999) Therefore, trust building as a communicative process is not changing messages, but expanding the common ground of participants.

The type of relationships between partners has an impact on the creation of synergy and innovations under these relationships. Hardy et al. (1998) distinguish trust-based and power-based relationships, which may look similar, but are not. Although they analyze these relationships on an inter-organizational level, their analysis works also for the intra-organizational level, at least to some extent. Trust-based co-operation may be spontaneous or generated through equal participation and shared meaning. It increases synergy and innovation, but also risks. In the circumstances of manipulation, co-operation is achieved through management of meaning. The dominant partner uses symbolic power to reduce risk and to increase predictability. In these circumstances, synergy is reduced. Capitulation means a situation where co-operation is achieved through dependency and socialization, and the subordinate acts as a tool of the dominant partner. In these circumstances, the risk to the dominant partner is low, but synergy is also low. Strategic thinking should call on trust for abandoning manipulation and capitulation, for rejecting a zero-sum view of power and competition, and for replacing it with a win-win view.