I have been thinking about trust a little recently and have come to the
conclusion that what motivates collaboration and interaction is not trust,
but common interest and mutual gain. This neither necessitates nor
precludes trust or respect between the collaborators. The existence of
trust does generate a willingness to transact and continue transacting,
but many transactions, espcially one-off buyer/ seller transactions, are
entered into for mutual gain alone. I interact with thousands of people
from all sorts of groups- including this one- and I do not trust very many
of those people- or need to. Trust only seems essential in relationships
with "significant others". With even my closest friends, understanding is
most important not trust.
There are those (Funkuyama et al) who believe that an absense of trust
necessitates formal contractual relations between parties transacting to
replace the trust- but I think you can lack trust and still interact
informally if mutual gain and non-exclusivity is in place. Indeed, this is
a powerful motivator of behavior- the choice business partners (but not
contractual strategic alliance partners) have to work with your
competitors stimulates accountability for delivering mutual gain honestly
and efficiently.
Trust is an interesting topic, regards sincerely simon buckingham,
http://www.unorg.com
--Simon Buckingham <go57@dial.pipex.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>