Trust Dynamics

Castelfranchi and Falcone (1999) propose a model of social engagement and cooperation, which include different views of goals and values driving collaboration. They may be instrumental and not instrumental. This model describes a circular link between trust (the beliefs — the "state of mind"), cooperative actions (engagement) and social effects (consequences). Trust builds trust and "... has a history." Also, trust is not only based on our beliefs about people and their willingness/abilities to cooperate in the present and the future (internal trust), but also is based on beliefs about the trustworthiness of the environment and third parties (external trust).

Relational quality and trust formation are processes, guided by cooperation experience and available knowledge. "The interpretation of these experiences is a complex, multi-dimensional problem that is a function of the number, frequency, and gravity of their interactions; the difference between actual and expected outcomes; the nature of any transgressions; the intentions or motivations attributed to a partner's behavior; and any advance warning and/or post facto explanation of its actions by the partner. Furthermore, they may affect the partners' willingness to rely on each other in terms of any one of the three elements that influence performance, that is organizational capacity, technical prowess, or integrity" (Arino, Torre & Ring, 2001).

Trust comes out from relationships and it is built dynamically in the process. "Trust builds trust," as Castelfranchi puts it. Trust drives delegation, but this is a dynamic delegation. If we focus only on trust as the belief about future actions of the trustee, we tend to study the characteristics of the trustee (trustability and reputation); we do not focus on what is relevant at the trustor level. And it is not enough to analyse the characteristics of the trustor's personality (the psychological and cultural variables which influence the tendency to trust somebody). We also need to focus on the process that builds this resource.

In an early study on cooperation in distant-education settings (Mandelli, 1995), we found that individual cooperation on the net, when not supported by previous knowledge and personal trust, tends to be fragile. The same result was found in a study by Jarvenpaa and Leidner (1998) on global virtual teams whose members were separated by location and culture. They concluded that "... global virtual teams may experience a form of 'swift' trust, but such trust appears to be very fragile and temporal" (p. 1).

Also in the organization literature social capital has been found as a precondition for the development of new alliances and greater trust. Networks are seen as repositories "... of information on availability, competencies and reliability of prospective partners. ... The more the emerging networks internalize information about potential partners, the more organizations resort to that network for cues on their future alliance decisions, which are thus more likely to be embedded in the emerging network. These new alliances, in turn, further increase the informational value of the network, enhancing its effect on subsequent alliance formation" (Gulati & Gargiulo, 1999, pp. 1440–1441).

Trust is not a one-shot state of the relationship. It is a dynamical and iterative process: "... nothing is set in stone. All collaborations start with a set of givens between the partners such as who they are, what has been said about them, and what their prior experiences have been with each other. While initial conditions are inherited, it would be wrong for management to assume that perceptions based on these givens are immutable. From the moment negotiations commence through the start-up and into the operation of the alliance, the relationship is a living entity subject to considerable growth and evolution, one that will be shaped by the partners' behavior" (Arino et al., 2001).