Straining for Shared Meaning in Organization Science: Problems of Trust and Distrust

Abstract

We present a problem-centered organizing framework of trust, in which prominent conceptualizations of trust and distrust from the organizational and allied social sciences are categorized based on the questions they attempt to answer. The framework we outline here is intended to complement earlier typologies by suggesting alternative strategies for employing the diverse trust literature, identifying questions that could be profitably addressed through interdisciplinary research efforts, and distinguishing disagreements where debate and research would seem to be especially worthwhile from those where such activities would appear to be much less useful.