ABSTRACT
High-trust cultures are common in egalitarian communal/small cooperative settings, with minimal hierarchy, democratic management, and irrelevant labor markets as members do all work. Though seductive-coercive control is illegitimate in such cases, with growth and success hired labor is often introduced; then democracy and egalitarianism dwindle and high-trust cultures tend to disappear, while members often do not notice this fundamental change, which is gradual and undeclared. High-trust cultures may persist if decentralization takes place and unit managers are allowed much discretion, while their high-morality is promoted by a servant transformational leader’s practices. Leading trustfully is more complex than low-trust seductive-coercive autocracy based on market forces and hierarchy, another reason for outsiders to avoid it. Managers must prove integrity, competence, predictability, and benevolence towards employees’ interests, needs, and wants. Trust requires qualities that are rare among US corporate managers, the largest group of management research subjects: honesty, integrity, sincerity, friendliness, and openness of information, such as admitting their own mistakes and failures.
