Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Note on editors
- Note on contributors
- Foreword
- Editors' acknowledgements
- Part I The conceptual challenge of researching trust across different ‘cultural spheres’
- 1 Unravelling the complexities of trust and culture
- 2 Trust differences across national–societal cultures: much to do, or much ado about nothing?
- 3 Towards a context-sensitive approach to researching trust in inter-organizational relationships
- 4 Making sense of trust across cultural contexts
- Part II Trust across different ‘cultural spheres’: inter-organizational studies
- Part III Trust across different ‘cultural spheres’: intra-organizational studies
- Part IV Conclusions and ways forward
- Index
- References
2 - Trust differences across national–societal cultures: much to do, or much ado about nothing?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Note on editors
- Note on contributors
- Foreword
- Editors' acknowledgements
- Part I The conceptual challenge of researching trust across different ‘cultural spheres’
- 1 Unravelling the complexities of trust and culture
- 2 Trust differences across national–societal cultures: much to do, or much ado about nothing?
- 3 Towards a context-sensitive approach to researching trust in inter-organizational relationships
- 4 Making sense of trust across cultural contexts
- Part II Trust across different ‘cultural spheres’: inter-organizational studies
- Part III Trust across different ‘cultural spheres’: intra-organizational studies
- Part IV Conclusions and ways forward
- Index
- References
Summary
Summary
Does trust and its development, functions and meaning, differ between people from different national–societal cultures? There is considerable anecdotal evidence and some theoretical argumentation to suggest it does, but are these supported by empirical research? This chapter reviews the available empirical evidence on the effects of national–societal culture on interpersonal trust. It focuses largely on quantitative empirical evidence to consider the extent to which, and the ways in which, interpersonal trust differs across national–societal cultures. In every category of our review we found evidence of cross-cultural differences, particularly on generalized trust, and also evidence of trust universals across cultures. In evaluating these findings, we conclude that trust may operate as a variform universal and variform functional universal. We conclude with two proposed routes for future research, and implications for practice.
Introduction
To an ever-increasing extent, ‘work’ involves close interaction and cooperation with people who come from a national–societal cultural background different from one's own. This emerging reality of work can be attributed to a number of factors. First, with the unrelenting advance of globalization, more and more organizations are taking a global approach to operations, including the operation of overseas international joint ventures and alliances, working with offshore suppliers and customers, and conducting global searches for talent. Second, the advance of communication technologies such as e-mail and videoconferencing has fostered a movement toward global virtual teams involving individuals from a variety of different cultural backgrounds.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Organizational TrustA Cultural Perspective, pp. 42 - 86Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
References
and 2003. ‘The search for universals in cross-cultural organizational behavior’. In (ed.) Organizational Behavior: the State of the Science, 2nd edn. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 373–411.Google Scholar
1997. ‘Does the transactional-transformational leadership paradigm transcend organizational and national boundaries?’ American Psychologist, 52, 130–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
1995. ‘Misunderstandings: a Japanese transplant in Italy strives for lean production’. Organization, 2, 55–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and 2007. ‘Culture-contingent signs of trust in emergent relationships’. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 104, 61–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
1981. ‘Ethnocentrism and its role in interpersonal trust’. In and (eds.) Scientific Inquiry and the Social Sciences. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 345–60.Google Scholar
and . 2004. ‘The boundaries of trust: own and others’ actions in the US and China'. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 55, 485–504.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and 2002. ‘Swift neighbors and persistent strangers: a cross-cultural investigation of trust and reciprocity in social exchange’. American Journal of Sociology, 108, 168–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and 2006. ‘Let's get personal: an international examination of the influence of communication, culture and social distance on other regarding preferences’. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 60, 373–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and 2006. ‘Interpersonal trust in German–Czech work relations: mutual expectations and suggestions for improvement’. Journal of Organizational Transformation & Social Change, 3, 173–99.Google Scholar
, , and 2006. ‘Trust and the relationship between leadership and follower performance: opening the black box in Australia and China’. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 12, 68–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and 2005. ‘The cultural mosaic: a metatheory for understanding the complexity of culture’. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90, 1128–40.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
, and 1998. ‘How can cooperation be fostered? The cultural effects of individualism-collectivism’. Academy of Management Review, 23, 285–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and 2003. ‘Contextual confidence and active trust development in the Chinese business environment’. Organization Science, 14, 69–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and 2007. ‘Trust, trustworthiness, and trust propensity: a meta-analytic test of their unique relationships with risk taking and job performance’. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92, 909–27.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
, , , , and 2005. ‘Trust building via risk taking: a cross-societal experiment’. Social Psychology Quarterly, 68, 121–42.Google Scholar
and 2005. ‘Predicting cross-national levels of social trust: global pattern or Nordic exceptionalism?’ European Sociological Review, 21, 311–27.Google Scholar
, and 2001. ‘Trends, developments and gaps in cross-cultural research on leadership’. Advances in Global Leadership, 2, 75–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and 2007. ‘Reliability and validity of the Chinese version of McAllister's trust scale’. Construction Management & Economics, 25, 1105–15.Google Scholar
and 2002. ‘Trust in leadership: meta-analytic findings and implications for research and practice’. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 611–28.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
, and 1998. ‘Understanding the influence of national culture on the development of trust’. Academy of Management Review, 23, 601–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
1986. ‘Trust, perceived importance of praise and criticism, and work performance: an examination of feedback in the United States and England’. Journal of Management, 12, 457–73.Google Scholar
2004. ‘Managing images of trustworthiness in organizations’. In and (eds.) Trust and Distrust in Organizations: Dilemmas and Approaches. New York: Sage, 275–92.Google Scholar
, and 2008. ‘It takes two to tango: an interdependence analysis of the spiraling of perceived trustworthiness and cooperation in interpersonal and intergroup relationships’. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 107, 161–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and 2006. ‘Direct and indirect effects of third-party relationships on interpersonal trust’. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91, 870–83.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
, , and . 2007. ‘Silence speaks volumes: the effectiveness of reticence in comparison to apology and denial for responding to integrity- and competence-based trust violations’. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92, 893–908.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
and 2003. ‘Fortune's best 100 companies to work for in America: do they work for shareholders?’ Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, 30, 771–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and 2008. ‘When does culture matter?’ In and (eds.) Handbook of Culture, Organizations, and Work. Cambridge University Press, 46–70.Google Scholar
, and 2000. ‘An information-processing perspective on leadership and culture: a case for connectionist architecture’. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 49, 133–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and 1982. A Study of Japanese National Character(in Japanese with an English summary) (Vol. IV). Tokyo: Idemitsushoten.Google Scholar
1980. Culture's Consequences: National Differences in Thinking and Organizing. Beverley Hills, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
2001. Culture's Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions, and Organizations Across Nations, 2nd edn. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
and 1988. ‘The Confucius connection: from cultural roots to economic growth’. Organizational Dynamics, 16, 5–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and 2005. ‘Tropic trust versus Nordic trust: experimental evidence from Tanzania and Sweden’. Economic Journal, 115, 505–32.Google Scholar
and 2003. ‘Levels of organizational trust in individualist versus collectivist societies: a seven-nation study’. Organization Science, 14, 81–90.Google Scholar
, and 1998. Human Cultures and Beliefs: A Cross-Cultural Sourcebook: Political, Religious, Sexual, and Economic Norms in 43 societies: Findings from the 1990–1993. World Values Survey. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
and 1999. ‘Communication and trust in global virtual teams’. Organization Science, 10, 791–815.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and 2002. ‘Trust in cross-cultural relationships’. In and (eds.) The Blackwell Handbook of Cross-Cultural Management. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 335–60.Google Scholar
and 1998. ‘Examination of transformational leadership and group process among Caucasion- and Asian-Americans: are they different?’ Research in International Business and International Relations, 7, 29–66.Google Scholar
1995. ‘On the folly of rewarding A, while hoping for B’. The Academy of Management Executive, 9, 7–14.Google Scholar
, and 2002. ‘Democracy, trust, and political efficacy: comparative analysis of Danish and Korean political culture’. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 51, 318–53.Google Scholar
and 1997. ‘The impact of cultural values on employee resistance to teams: toward a model of globalized self-managing work team effectiveness’. Academy of Management Review, 22, 730–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and 2007. ‘Effects of direct and indirect exchange on trust of in-group members’ [in Japanese]. Japanese Journal of Psychology, 77, 519–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and 1997. ‘Does social capital have an economic payoff? A cross-country investigation’. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 112, 1251–88.Google Scholar
, , , and 2005. ‘Oxytocin increases trust in humans’. Nature, 435, 673–76.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
2005. ‘Formation of trust in German–Mexican business relations’. In and (eds.) Trust under Pressure: Empirical Investigations of Trust and Trust Building in Uncertain Circumstances. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 35–53.Google Scholar
, , , , and 2007. ‘Culture, identity, and structure in social exchange: a web-based trust experiment in the United States and Japan’. Social Psychology Quarterly, 70, 461–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and 2000. ‘Power-distance, gender and organizational justice’. Journal of Management, 26, 685–704.Google Scholar
and 1996. ‘Developing and maintaining trust in work relationships’. In and (eds.) Trust in Organizations: Frontiers of Theory and Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 114–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
1980. ‘The search for psychological universals’. In and (eds.) Handbook of Cross-Cultural Psychology. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 143–204.Google Scholar
2002. ‘Building trust in cross-cultural collaborations: toward a contingency perspective’. Journal of Management, 28, 669–94.Google Scholar
, and 2004. ‘Trust and cooperation: a comparison of ingroup preference and trust behavior between American and Japanese students’. Japanese Journal of Psychology, 75, 308–15.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
, , , and 2001. ‘Democratic values and mutual perceptions of human rights in four Pacific Rim nations’. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 25, 405–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and 1999. ‘The effect of the performance appraisal system on trust for management: a field quasi-experiment’. Journal of Applied Psychology, 84, 123–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and 1995. ‘An integrative model of organizational trust’. Academy of Management Review, 20, 709–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
1995. ‘Affect- and cognition-based trust as foundations for interpersonal cooperation in organizations’. Academy of Management Journal, 38, 24–59.Google Scholar
2007. ‘Cross-cultural code-switching: the psychological challenges of adapting behavior in foreign cultural interactions’. Academy of Management Review, 622–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and 2007. ‘An analysis of trust among globally distributed work teams in an organizational setting’. Knowledge and Process Management, 14, 158–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and 2000. ‘The concept of trustworthiness: a cross-cultural comparison between Japanese and U.S. business people’. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 28, 347–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
1999. ‘National culture and the development of trust: the need for more data and less theory’. Academy of Management Review, 24, 9–10.Google Scholar
, and 2002. ‘Impact of national origin and entry mode on trust and organizational commitment’. Multinational Business Review, 10, 52–61.Google Scholar
2002. ‘Social capital and democracy: an interdependent relationship’. American Sociological Review, 67, 254–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and 2000. ‘Insufficient bureaucracy: trust and commitment in particularistic organizations’. Organization Science, 11, 148–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and 2006. ‘Extending the faultline model to geographically dispersed teams: how colocated subgroups can impair group functioning’. Academy of Management Journal, 49, 679–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
1998. ‘The effect of cultural adaptation on perceived trustworthiness’. Journal of Global Marketing, 11, 41–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2002. ‘The effect of cultural adaptation on perceived trustworthiness: Americans adapting to People's Republic of China Chinese’. Journal of International Consumer Marketing, 15, 25–41.
2004. ‘The effect of Americans’ adaptation to Malaysians on perceived trustworthiness'. Journal of International Consumer Marketing, 16, 7–23.Google Scholar
2005. ‘The effect of cultural adaptation on perceived trustworthiness: Americans adapting to Chinese Indonesians’. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, 17, 70–88.Google Scholar
, , . and 2006. ‘A cross-cultural examination of the endorsement of ethical leadership’. Journal of Business Ethics, 63, 345–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2006. ‘Publication of nonsignificant results: a survey of psychologists’ opinions'. Psychological Reports, 98, 169–75.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
and 2002. ‘Relationship bonding and trust as a foundation for commitment in U.S.–Mexican strategic alliances: a structural equation modeling approach’. Journal of International Marketing, 10, 53–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
1979. ‘The “file drawer problem” and tolerance for null results’. Psychological Bulletin, 86, 638–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
1971. ‘Generalized expectancies for interpersonal trust’. American Psychologist, 26, 443–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , . and 1998. ‘Not so different after all: a cross-discipline view of trust’. Academy of Management Review, 23, 393–404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and 2006. ‘Trust, confidence and social environment in post-communist societies’. Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 39, 59–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and 2005. ‘Do trust and trustworthiness pay off?’ Journal of Human Resources, 40, 621–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and 1981. ‘The relationship between conflict resolution approaches and trust: a cross cultural study’. Academy of Management Journal, 24, 803–15.Google Scholar
, , , , and 2008. ‘The intercultural trust paradigm: studying joint cultural interaction and social exchange in real time over the Internet’. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 32, 215–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and 2005. ‘Understanding interpersonal trust in a Confucian-influenced society: an exploratory study’. International Journal of Cross Cultural Management: 5, 197–212.Google Scholar
, . and 2007. ‘Location, location, location: antecedents of trust across hierarchical and geographical positions’. Paper presented at the European Group for Organisation Studies.
2002. ‘Leadership dyads in the cruise industry: the impact of cultural congruency’. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 21, 425–41.Google Scholar
and 1995. ‘Responses of employees to cultural adaptation by a foreign manager’. Journal of Applied Psychology, 80, 133–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2006. ‘Swedish tribalism and Tanzanian entrepreneurship: preconditions for trust formation’. Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 18, 91–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and . 2001. ‘Cooperative conflict in China: cooperative conflict as a bridge between East and West’. Journal of World Business, 36, 166–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , and 2000. ‘Collectivism, propensity to trust and self-esteem as predictors of organizational citizenship in a non-work setting’. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 21, 3–23.3.0.CO;2-6>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , . and . 2007. ‘Cross-cultural measurement of supervisor trustworthiness: an assessment of measurement invariance across three cultures’. The Leadership Quarterly, 18, 477–89.Google Scholar
and 2003. ‘Trust and other-anxiety in negotiations: dynamics across boundaries of self and culture’. Negotiation Journal, 19, 329–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
1988. ‘The provision of a sanctioning system in the United States and Japan’. Social Psychology Quarterly, 51, 265–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and 1994. ‘Trust and commitment in the United States and Japan. Motivation & Emotion, 18(2), 129–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and 1998. ‘Uncertainty, trust, and commitment formation in the United States and Japan’. American Journal of Sociology, 104, 165–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , . and 2005. ‘Cross-cultural differences in relationship- and group-based trust’. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 48–62.Google ScholarPubMed
and 2006. ‘Neuroactive hormones and interpersonal trust: international evidence’. Economics & Human Biology, 4, 412–29.Google ScholarPubMed
, , and 2004. ‘Interpersonal trust in cross-functional, geographically distributed work: a longitudinal study’. Information and Organization, 14, 1–26.Google Scholar
- 62
- Cited by