The issue of trust has seemingly never been more on the forefront, thanks to a wave of corporate scandals from Enron to Martha. But recent scholarship in the social sciences on this issue of trust points to a wide range of perspectives on this elusive yet pervasive theme.
Part of the Russell Sage Foundation Series on Trust, Trust and Distrust in Organizations: Dilemmas and Approaches is a compilation of recent research and theory on issues of trust and distrust across a diverse range of organizational settings including the doctor-patient relationship, social work relationships, geographically dispersed teams, virtual teams, and the Internet. Additionally, the studies in this volume include a diverse representation of quantitative and qualitative research methods from sociologists, social psychologists, and political scientists.
The first part of the book focuses on trust relationships that are hierarchical such as employer-employee and doctor-patient, while the second part examines the impact of trust in collective situations such as teams and networks.
Part three presents challenges of trust in various settings such as managing images of trustworthiness in organizations and the effects of betrayal when trust is broken.