Seeing Trust Beyond

Mintzberg (1991) remarks that strategic thinkers also have to be able to see beyond. He says: "Seeing beyond is different from seeing ahead. The latter foresees an expected future by constructing a framework out of the events of the past — it intuitively forecasts discontinuities. The former, in contrast, constructs the future itself — it invents a world that would not otherwise be" (p. 24). Seeing beyond in strategic thinking can be described as a process where the manager, after looking around for a time, suddenly sees and knows how things should be in the future. I suggest that within organizations this is connected to developing the collaborative and trust-based organization. Therefore, especially in the circumstances of mistrust, seeing beyond calls for understanding the necessity of the change of organizational culture to be able to guarantee the survival of the organization.

At the inter-organizational level, seeing beyond means seeing the necessity to build strategic trust-based partnerships. Scott (2000), who studied facilitating inter-organizational learning with information technology, noticed that although organizations already collaborated closely through virtual integration, trust was needed for effective inter-organizational learning. Sydow (1998) presents that there are six structural properties, which should be taken into account in considering the constitution of inter-organizational trust. Frequent and open communication is needed to increase the opportunity for better mutual understanding and predictability. Multiplicity of relationships provides opportunities to demonstrate trustworthiness at wider levels. Open-endedness of relationships exists because of the expectancy of a continuation of relationships and the "shadow of the future"; it means that organizations will also benefit from their partnership in the future. Balanced autonomy and dependence promotes permanence in relationships, even though in the case of complete autonomy or dependence, trusted relationships are rather dispensable. Number and homophility of network organizations affect the inter-organizational trust, because it is more likely in networks of a small number of organizations and also between similar organizations. In addition, a narrow and well-defined inter-organizational field may enhance the constitution of inter-organizational trust.

Seeing trust beyond invents an organization as a strategic actor and partner. St hle and Laento (2000) state that partnership includes integration of knowledge capital, production of added value, and building trust. We can assume that the relation between trust and partnership is a two-way relationship. On one hand, partnership is based partly on trust. On the other hand, trust raises the partnership to the strategic level. Therefore, also seeing trust beyond is a strategic question for the organization.