1 TRUST AND TRUST IN ORGANIZATIONS

Abstract: Studies about trust and cooperation has been traditionally oriented toward inter-personal trust, focusing on dyadic relationships between individuals. Although there are some controversies about the possibility of extending the concept of trust to trust in institutions, it is also important to pay attention to these relationships between individuals in the context of different institutional settings. In the markets, or in the political arena people use to interact with different kind of organizations, like enterprises and governmental bureaucracies. Those interactions imply trust like interactions between individuals in absence of an institutional framework. I assume that the interaction individual-organization is asymmetric in vertical organizations by contrast with horizontal networks. Nevertheless, organizations need to generate trust as a mean to secure the future value of the relationships. In the model, the degree of asymmetry between organizations and individuals depends on the extent that the organization posses valuable resources to the individual. The degree of asymmetry in turn affects the behavior into the organization and the expectations the individuals about the organization