At the crossroads: Future directions in trust research

Abstract

This forum paper is intended to stimulate a debate on a fundamental conceptual issue in trust research. It argues that the dominant stream of literature focuses too much on the micro level of trust building processes and hence promotes a reductionist understanding of the phenomenon. In future trust research, it is suggested to place considerably more emphasis on the ‘constitutive’ embeddedness of actors’ behaviour in the institutional environment. The latter is shown to be conducive to overcoming the limitations of current mainstream trust research and to developing new insights into the role and functioning of trust in modern business systems.