Introduction

In trying to understand the basic dynamics of human interaction and social systems, researchers have sought answers to one of the most permanent and motivating questions in social sciences, which Harold Lasswell (1958) bluntly dubbed "who gets what, when, and how." Before him, David Easton (1953, p. 137) formulated the same question as "who is to get what there is of desirable things." Since Easton and Lasswell, social scientists have held power as influential motivators for political participation and a major explanation for organizational practices and their outcomes.

However, there are researchers who have begun to question the primacy of the power hypothesis by asking: Does it really explain important social phenomena exhaustively or sufficiently and is there something which could be even more fundamental than power itself, something on which it could actually rest (Arrow, 1974; Lipset & Schneider, 1983; Gibb, 1978; Luhmann, 1979; Misztral, 1996)? Their search has yielded new interesting factors from which at this moment trust seems to be one of the most promising alternatives to the power hypothesis as the primary explanation of "who gets what, when, and how."

By making use of trust, social scientists have gone beyond the power hypothesis in their pursuit of understanding why some people, organizations and even nations can do better than others and why certain virtues like integrity, transparency and belief in social progress have become more firmly rooted in some of them than in others (see, for instance, Fukuyama, 1995; Putnam, Leonardi & Nanetti, 1993; Whitney, 1996; Harisalo & Miettinen, 1997). Charles Handy (2002, p. 49), for instance, argues that markets and social life rely on certain rules and laws, but those rules and laws in turn depend on trust and truth. He goes on to argue that if trust is eroded and truth concealed, the game becomes so unreliable that no one will want to play. However, looking at what is happening right now in commerce and politics could make at least some of us wonder whether trust is a luxury people cannot afford (see Lipset & Schneider, 1983; Savall & Zardet, 1997; Harisalo & Stenvall, 2001a; M ller, 2000).

But, what is trust and how could it be conceptualized? Is it the same or a different phenomenon in different situations and organizational environments? How could trust be related to other common concepts, like satisfaction and legitimacy? We also pay attention to the role of trust in facilitating people's efforts to accomplish their objectives and to what extent mistrust prevents them from doing so. Does trust bring about extra value to the way in which organizations are built and run? These are the questions we address in this chapter.

We analyze trust and mistrust in the framework of organizations and organizational behavior. Social life as a whole is governed by organizations (Etzioni, 1970, p. 7). A clear majority of people work in them and send their lives in different environments which are made possible and provided for them by organizations. People and organizations continuously affect each other in various ways in different contexts and the quantity and quality of their interaction will shape the amount of trust and mistrust among them.

Organizational behavior is an approach that investigates the impact that individuals and groups, and structure, have on behavior within organizations for the purpose of applying such knowledge towards improving an organization's effectiveness (see Robbins, 1998, p. 8; Mullins, 1996, p. 4). It emphasizes that an organization is basically a group of people behaving (Simon, Smithburg & Thompson, 1974, p. 55). These people are not tools or machines, because they have feelings, hopes, and fears and they may become angry, frustrated, and happy (Simon, Smithburg & Thompson, 1974, p. 55). They affect the organization they work in and their organization affects them. Trust and mistrust in organizations are the results of this dynamic interaction. On the basis of the organizational behavior approach, we analyze trust and mistrust from the perspective of acting people. It is our contribution to link explicitly human behavior with trust.