ABSTRACT
Trust is an individual’s willingness to be vulnerable to others. Trustworthiness reduces employee uncertainty related to change. Formed relationships and enduring bonds with others have implications for both the physical and psychological well-being of the individual. Procedural justice reflects the perceived fairness of decision-making processes and the degree to which they are consistent, accurate, unbiased and open to voice and input. People feel most comfortable when they are getting exactly what they deserve from their relationships—no more and certainly no less. Antisocial or inhumane conduct can put pressure on trust and trustworthiness. Moral disengagement is about mechanisms that prevent us feeling bad when doing bad things. Group trust and strong emotion can also be (or become) counterproductive. Groupthink occurs when a group of people make faulty decisions because of the desire to maintain harmony and conformity in the group.
Trusting is core social motive number four. It is one of the two (relatively) affective motives (the other is self-enhancing). Trusting is the need to view others as basically benign, seeing the world as a benevolent place (Fiske, 2004). Trust involves “confidence or faith that some other, upon whom we must depend, will not act in ways that occasion us painful consequences” (Boon, 1995, p. 656). People have a predisposition to trust others. This can make them vulnerable, but also facilitates interactions with others. People differ and some of them are relatively paranoid instead of trusting, although most people are biased toward seeing the best in other people and do expect fairly good outcomes from the interaction with other people (Fiske, 2004). Trust facilitates group cohesion and provides a relatively efficient mechanism for group functioning. Trust is ‘materialized’ in attachments: enduring emotional bonds between people in family, group and organizational settings that reduce stress and provide security, safety and comfort. Attachment is positively related to trustworthiness. Trust is protected by and developed through the phenomenon of fair process. People typically trust others to behave in a prosocial way, but are sensitive to antisocial behaviour and inequity. People have their strategies to deal with own behaviour that puts trust (in the social context and in themselves) at stake, for example by the cognitive restructuring of inhumane conduct into benign or worthy conduct by moral justification. Trusting is related to change and management topics such as compliance, cooperation, structure and systems, and resistance to change.
In this chapter the following theories and concepts are presented and assessed:
Trust—Attachment theory—Fair process: Justice theory and procedural justice—Equity theory—Moral disengagement—Groupthink
