Building Trust
You have just graduated from ASU with your MPA and landed a job as an assistant to the City of Phoenix manger. The City of Phoenix and ASU are collaborating to enact a quarter cent sales tax in order to extend the light rail down Camelback, making a stop at the main entrance of the campus. Using the readings from this topic, do the following in 500750 words.
1. Describe the various stakeholders involved in this project with whom you may need to build trust.
2. Describe all the factors you should consider when taking on this goal.
3. Explain how you can use your knowledge of these factors to build trust with the various parties involved.
4. Recommend best practices to build trust with all stakeholders involved.
Use two to three scholarly resources to support your explanations.
Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide.
Nurturing collaborative relations: Building trust in interorganizational collaboration
Vangen, Siv; Huxham, Chris. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science; Arlington Vol. 39, Iss. 1, (Mar 2003): 5-
31. DOI:10.1177/0021886303039001001
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Abstract
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Many organizations aspire to gain collaborative advantage by working in partnerships across
organizational, sectoral, and even national boundaries. Such collaborations, however, are
difficult to manage, and the likelihood of disappointing outputs is high. To create advantage,
practitioners need to engage in a continuous process of nurturing the collaborative processes.
One issue that appears significant in the nurturing process is trust. This article incorporates a
synthesis of research on trust with research on other aspects of collaboration. It develops a trust-
building loop and examines its validity to inform practice. It argues that trust building is
problematic and that management of trust implies both the ability to cope in situations where
trust is lacking and the ability to build trust in situations where this is possible. It summarizes
pragmatic implications in a tool for thinking about and addressing trust management in different
collaborative situations.
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Headnote
Many organizations aspire to gain collaborative advantage by working in partnerships across
organizational, sectoral, and even national boundaries. Such collaborations, however, are
difficult to manage, and the likelihood of disappointing outputs is high. To create advantage,
practitioners need to engage in a continuous process of nurturing the collaborative processes.
One issue that appears significant in the nurturing process is trust. This article incorporates a
synthesis of research on trust with research on other aspects of collaboration. It develops a trust-
building loop and examines its validity to inform practice. It argues that trust building is
problematic and that management of trust implies both the ability to cope in situations where
trust is lacking and the ability to build trust in situations where this is possible. It summarizes
pragmatic implications in a tool for thinking about and addressing trust management in different
collaborative situations.
Keywords: collaboration; collaborative advantage,- trust; alliances; interorganizational relations
Working collaboratively across organizational, sectoral, and even national boundaries is now a
popular component of organizational life. Collaborative responses to social problems, for
example, are now fairly common throughout the world (e.g., Axinn & Axinn, 1997; Hardy &
Phillips, 1998; Mandell, 2001). The aim is usually to deal more effectively with major issues that
sit in the organizations’ “inter-organizational domain” (Trist, 1983) and that cannot be tackled by
any organization acting alone. Increasingly, therefore, the cooperation between public, private,
and voluntary sector organizations for the benefit of the public at large is demanded (Glaister,
1999; Hudson, Hardy, Henwood, & Wistow, 1999). Similarly, corporate demands have led to a
large number of organizations being engaged in international joint ventures, strategic alliances,
or other forms of interorganizational relations (e.g., Fryxell, Dooley, & Vryza, 2002; Inkpen &
Li, 1999). Although being initiated for different reasons (Spekman, Forbes, Isabella, &
MacAvoy, 1998), here, too, the usual general aspiration is the achievement of some form of
“collaborative advantage” (Huxham, 1996). Evidence suggests, however, that collaboration
imposes huge demands on those entering into it (could, Ebers, & Clinchy, 1999; Huxham &
Vangen, 2000c) and that the likelihood of disappointing outputs and failures is high (Bleeke &
Ernst, 1993; Medcof, 1997; Reuer, 1998).
Much research has been directed at gaining an understanding of the challenges facing those
involved in interorganizational collaboration. Contributions are based on a wide range of
theoretical perspectives including corporate, social, economical, institutional, and political (Gray
& Wood, 1991) and cover a range of collaborative relations including, for example, public-
private partnerships, industrial networks, and strategic alliances (Child & Faulkner, 1998;
Genefke & McDonald, 2001). Some focus on the management of collaborative processes in
general (Kanter, 1994), and others focus specifically on improving the chances of success
(Dacin, Hitt, & Levitas, 1997; Das & Teng, 1998; Gray, 1985). Some have concluded that
considerable efforts are required to nurture collaborative relations through their early stages
(Carley & Christie, 1992; Wistow & Hardy, 1991). Our own research suggests, as we have
argued elsewhere, that the typically ambiguous, complex, and dynamic structure of
collaborations presents challenges that require practitioners to engage in a “continuous process of
nurturing” (Huxham & Vangen, 2000c).
Collaboration gives rise to a variety of issues causing concern and anxiety for managers
(Huxham & Vangen, 1996), and hence a range of different factors is integral to the success of
collaboration. The issue of trust in particular has been reported repeatedly to be significant and
hence important in the nurturing of collaborative processes. Indeed, literatures across the fields
of psychology, economics, sociology, and organizational sciences focus on trust in the contexts
of both intra- and interorganizational collaboration. These contributions offer a host of extremely
diverse conceptualizations and interpretations, and several recent contributions have aimed to
provide an overview of, and synthesize theories on, trust (see, for example, Kramer & Tyler,
1996; Lane & Bachmann, 1998; Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman, 1995; Sitkin, Rousseau, Burt, &
Camerer, 1998).
Although some contributions take a managerial perspective and begin to address the implications
of trust issues on management practice, few do so while considering specifically the theory and
hence complexity of interorganizational collaborations. Our own focus is on the provision of
practice-oriented theory into the management of trust in interorganizational collaborations,
which is in contrast to most other contributions. The article aims to achieve this through the
synthesis of research on trust in interorganizational collaboration with research on other aspects
of collaboration. The article thus contributes to practice-oriented theory on collaboration (Gray,
1989; Huxham, 1996; Osborn & Hagedoorn, 1997; Waddock, 1989) with a particular focus on
how to manage and build trust in this context.
METHODOLOGY
This research forms part of a program that has been ongoing since the late 1980s and that is
concerned with the development of practice-oriented theory into the management of
interorganizational collaboration (see, e.g., Huxham, 1993, 1996; Huxham & Vangen, 1996,
2000a, 2000b, 2000c, 2001; Vangen, 1995, 1998; Vangen & Huxham, 1998, in press). It has
involved us as researchers in intervening in a large number of collaborations concerned with a
wide variety of issues including health issues, economic area regeneration, and poverty
alleviation. During these interventions, the expressed experiences, views, action-centered
dilemmas, and actual actions of participants have been recorded as research data in a variety of
ways including detailed notes, flipcharts, cognitive and cause maps, and video and tape
recordings. This amounts to a vast quantity of data on many different aspects of collaboration.
Theory development has been “emergent,” firmly grounded in, and produced inductively from
the data (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). In this article, we draw specifically on some of the theory
developed via this program, as outlined below.
One key theoretical thrust of this research program has been the development of “themes in
collaboration” (Huxham & Vangen, 1996; Vangen, 1998)-these are “in vivo” labels (Glaser,
1992; Strauss & Corbin, 1998) given to abroad grouping of issues raised repeatedly by
practitioners as causing anxiety or reward in collaboration. The collaboration themes as such
represent generic collaboration issues typically of concern to practitioners and have therefore
guided our focus in the development of practice-oriented theory. The theme labels include aims
and objectives, accountability, commitment and determination, compromise, appropriate
working processes, communication, democracy and inclusiveness (membership), trust, and
power. A research aim has been, and continues to be, to develop a deeper understanding of the
issues underlying each of the themes as well as the interrelationship between them. In this article,
our main focus is on developing conceptualizations on trust, as described below.
In contrast to other themes on collaboration, the literature on trust is very diverse and
voluminous. This rendered inappropriate our normal approach, which is to develop theory from
naturally occurring data only (Marshall & Rossman, 1989). Here, we considered the literature as
an additional source of data from which insight about the management of trust could be drawn
inductively. Furthermore, an initial scan of this literature suggested that power (e.g., Calton &
Lad, 1995; Lane & Bachmann, 1998) and control (e.g., Das & Teng, 1998; Gulati, 1998; Sitkin
et al., 1998) are concepts perceived as being closely related to trust, so specific considerations of
these should be part of our analysis in as far as they related directly to trust. As such, we
explicitly integrated literature on trust with data sources from our own research and with the
collaboration theory developed and published previously as part of the overall research program.
Using this approach, we developed theory on the management of trust in collaboration via three
distinct yet interlinked activities in a developmental and iterative process, as described below.
A first activity was a thorough scanning of the literature on trust in collaboration. A highly
methodological analytical method was adopted with the view to seeking insight about the
management of trust in interorganizational collaboration that could aid the development of
practice-oriented theory. During the review, several hundred statements, concepts, and ideas
identified as having possible implications for practice were captured onto post-it notes and
grouped into clusters of similar issues. Following several iterations, five large clusters were
identified. These were labeled expectation forming, risk, trust, cyclical development, and trust
building. Figure 1 shows examples in each of these clusters. We conceptualized and summarized
these insights in a model-the trust-building loop-that suggests that trust building is a cyclical
process and that with each positive outcome, trust builds on itself incrementally, over time, in a
virtuous circle (this is discussed below, in the section headed The Cyclical Aspect of Trust
Building). Our working definition of trust, as such, is embedded in this trustbuilding loop.
A second activity entailed a thorough scanning of our own empirical data of actual statements
made by practitioners during interventions with the aim of isolating statements including the
words trust, power, and control. Statements made “in the same breath” as those on trust, power,
and control also were identified to explore possible links and gain a better understanding of
context. In a similar fashion to that illustrated in Figure 1, all statements were then grouped into
clusters of similar ideas, which helped to provide an initial understanding of the key issue as
perceived by practitioners. Many of these actual statements as well as snapshots of stories as told
by practitioners are used as examples throughout the article. This analysis showed that although
practitioners do not provide much spontaneous elaboration on trust, the majority argues that trust
is an essential ingredient for successful collaboration and usually that they perceive a lack of
trust in their own collaborative situations.
Although the literature touches on issues that may hamper trust building-for example, the extent
to which a contract helps or hinders trust building-the analysis of practitioners’ views was
particularly helpful in identifying factors that hamper trust building. It was concluded that trust
cannot be built in isolation of any other key variables and that trust building requires investment
of time and careful consideration of other key issues including the management of purpose,
power imbalances, credit sharing, the need for leadership while not allowing anyone to “take
over,” and so on (this is discussed below in the section headed Trust in the Practice of
Collaboration). The third analytical activity undertaken therefore was concerned specifically
with how to facilitate trust building in a cyclical process while paying attention to issues that
tend to hamper trust building. We picked up on practitioners’ views on trust building and
examined the value of the trust-building loop as a pragmatic tool. Our vehicle for this analysis
was previous conceptualizations pertaining to structural features of collaboration and related
dynamics, leadership, management of purpose, and power (Huxham & Vangen, 2000a, 2000b,
2000c; Vangen & Huxham, in press). We also drew heavily on other researchers’
conceptualizations, in particular with regard to power. This resulted in the identification of some
lessons for the management of trust that can help influence effectiveness in the practice of
collaboration as discussed below in the section headed The Cyclical Trust-Building Process in
Practice.
FIGURE 1:
The process of building these conceptualizations into a coherent set of arguments has involved
cycling through these activities while drafting and redrafting the article, circulating drafts for
comment, presenting the arguments at academic conferences, and using them with practitioners
in action research interventions. The arguments to be presented below thus have been subjected
to wide-ranging scrutiny and refined accordingly. The remainder of this article reflects this
process. It begins with the conceptualizations that draw explicitly on the literature on trust,
followed by conceptualizations based on practitioners’ perceptions. The last section builds
further on these two sections and interacts simultaneously with the theory on collaboration with
the aim to make a specific contribution to this theory about the management of trust.
THE CYCLICAL ASPECT OF TRUST BUILDING
This section is concerned with the identification of lessons for the management of trust drawn
from the literature on trust in interorganizational collaboration. The literature suggests that three
conceptualizations concerned with expectation forming, risk taking, and vulnerability are
particularly relevant and fundamental to the management of trust, as discussed below.
Theories on trust are based on the notion of interdependence between the party who trusts and
the party who is trusted (Dasgupta, 1988; Luhmann, 1979). Therefore, it is argued that trust is
best understood in terms of the ability to form expectations about aims and partners’ future
behaviors in relation to those aims. A necessary condition for trust is thus that expectations can
be formed on one hand and fulfilled on the other (Barber, 1983; Butler & Gill, 1995; Gulati,
1995; Hardy, Phillips, & Lawrence, 1998; Koenig & van Wijk, 1993; Rousseau, Sitkin, Burt, &
Camerer, 1998; Sitkin et al., 1998). The ability to form expectations can be interpreted from both
future-oriented and historical perspectives. Thus, creation of trust can be rooted either in
anticipation that something will be forthcoming (Brigham & Corbett, 1996; Butler & Gill, 1995;
Lane & Bachmann, 1996; Lyson & Mehta, 1996; Vansina, Taillieu, & Schruijer, 1998) or on
common past satisfactory experiences (Calton & Lad, 1995; Das & Teng, 1998; Gulati, 1995;
Koenig & van Wijk, 1993; Luhmann, 1979; Zucker, 1986).
When trust is rooted in anticipation, it is argued that developing understanding of partners’
expectations is crucial at the formation stage of the partnership (Butler & Gill, 1995; Vansina et
al., 1998). Future-based trust as such is gained through agreements, made in the early stages of a
collaboration, in which trust serves as a substitute for formal contracts (Bradach & Eccles, 1989;
Gulati, 1995). In the language of game theory, trust based on previous experiences may be seen
as deriving from a “repeated game” (Axelrod, 1984; Miller, 1992). This type of trust, deriving
out of repeated interactions over time between those who trust and those who are trusted, has
been referred to as “relational trust” (Rousseau et al., 1998), “affective trust” (McAllister, 1995),
and “identity-based” trust (Coleman, 1990). Historically rooted trust also can be based on a
potential partner’s reputation in the “market place” (Ring, 1997) or on other “social structures”
(Burt & Knez, 1996). This kind of trust, which is based on credible information regarding the
intentions or competence of another (Barber, 1983), has been described as “calculus-based”
(Rousseau et al., 1998).
The concept of risk (Coleman, 1990; Das & Teng, 1998; Granovetter, 1985; Ring, 1997, Rotten
1967; Rousseau et al., 1998) or, more specifically, the fear that a partner will act
opportunistically (Ring & Van de Ven, 1992, 1994) is seen as central to the notion of trust.
Closely associated with this is the notion of vulnerability, which relates to the “trustor” being
dependent on the “trustee” to deliver (Gambetta, 1988; Mishra, 1996). The act of trusting is the
willingness to assume that a partner will bear the vulnerability stemming from the acceptance of
risk. In economic transactions, for example, sanctions may be put in place to guard against
opportunistic behavior. “Deterrence– based” trust is described as a form of trust that may derive
when such sanctions have been put in place (Rousseau et al., 1998).
On one hand, it is argued that the creation of trust implies taking a risk (Lewis & Weigert, 1985;
Luhmann, 1988), whereas on the other hand, the existence of trust is seen as “a mechanism to
reduce the risk of opportunistic behavior” (Bradach & Eccles, 1989; Lane & Bachmann, 1996;
Lyson & Metha 1996; Ring & Van de Ven, 1992). Thus, trust and risk form a reciprocal
relationship. Trust leads to risk taking, and providing that initial expectations materialize, risk
taking in turn buttresses a sense of trust (Coleman, 1990; Das & Teng, 1998). Collaborations are
argued to be particularly risky ventures (Butler & Gill, 1995; Das & Teng, 1998), so some trust
is required to initiate them (Webb, 1991).
Taken together, the above arguments about expectations, risk, and vulnerability imply that trust
building must be a cyclic process. Each time partners act together, they take a risk and form
expectations about the intended outcome and the way others will contribute to achieving it. Each
time an outcome meets expectations, trusting attitudes are reinforced. The outcome becomes part
of the history of the relationship, increasing the chance that partners will have positive
expectations about joint actions in the future. The increased trust reduces the sense of risk for
these future actions.
Many authors have reached similar conclusions. For example, Gulati (1995) and Lewicki and
Bunker (1996) stress the incremental development of trust as parties repeatedly interact. Ring
(1997) suggests that even if trust does not already exist, it may emerge from formal and informal
processes of transacting. Butler and Gill (1995) see trust increasing through a “cycle of learning.”
Reciprocity-“I trust because you trust”-is also seen as an element in the cycle (Das & Teng 1998;
McAllister 1995). As demonstrated by Axelrod (1984), “when one trusting act is reciprocated by
another, gradually a durable basis for cooperation can be erected” (in Calton and Lad, 1995, p.
282).
FIGURE 2:
Getting started in the cyclic process in situations where there is no history of trust clearly implies
that the parties must be willing to take a risk and become vulnerable to the actions of the other
partners) (Mayer et al., 1995). This means having “enough” trust to take the act of faith required
to initiate the cycle. The parties also must be able to form expectations about outcomes. The
more modest the outcomes expected and the lower the level of risk, the greater the chance that
expectations will be met. There is therefore a strong case for initiating collaboration through
modest, low-risk initiatives (Das & Teng, 1998; Webb, 1991). More ambitious ventures can then
be undertaken as trusting attitudes develop. To ensure that the virtuous circle is sustained, the
outcomes aimed for need to be realistic relative to the level of trust between (and to the
capabilities and capacities of) the participating organizations. This line of argument is captured
in the trust-building loop in Figure 2.
TRUST IN THE PRACTICE OF COLLABORATION
The summary of the literature above concluded that the management of trust in
interorganizational collaboration requires trust to be built in a cyclical process. In this section, we
develop this argument on the basis of practitioners’ commentary about trust and related issues.
Perceptions About Power, Control, and Lack of Trust
The notion of trust clearly provides a conceptual handle to which practitioners involved in
collaborative initiatives relate. Statements such as, “Trust and respect is important if
collaboration is to be successful and enjoyable” and “Communication and trust are very
important” are typical and indicate that the existence of trust between the parties involved is seen
as an important success factor. This view mirrors that held by other researchers of interfirm
collaborations who repeatedly conclude that trust is an essential ingredient of success (Child,
2001; Das & Teng 1998; Koenig & van Wijk 1993; Lane & Bachmann 1998; Ring & Van de
Ven, 1992, 1994; Walsh, Wang, & Xin, 1999). Practitioners, however, often perceive a lack of
trust-or at least an inadequate level of it-in their own collaborative relationships. Words such as
hostility,, fighting, and mistrust are frequently used.
Issues concerned with power relationships seem to be significant contributors to mistrust and to
the hampering of trust building. Practitioners argue for the need to deal with power differences
so as to minimize interagency hostility and mistrust, and they use phrases such as “power
games,” “power plays,” and “power struggles,” which suggest that power issues are frequently
seen to be problematic. For example, the manager of a regeneration partnership commented that
two major public agencies were continuously “fighting” over which should take the lead in the
partnership. She implied that they were fighting for control of its territory, presumably driven by
glory-seeking motivations. Practitioners often comment about glory seeking and perceive the
claiming of credit for collaborative achievements to be a manifestation of power. They also view
such behavior as a hindrance to trust building, arguing that “claiming the credit for pieces of
work implies lack of trust” and “(we need to) deal with glory seekers so as to build trust between
members.”
A director of a not-for-profit organization who related the story of how she had convened and led
a major collaborative initiative involving many organizations from the different sectors in a
deprived locality of her city exemplified these issues. She described the painstaking process
through which she had gradually brought reluctant public agencies on board and then
commented that because the initiative had become successfully established, they were “taking
over.” Furthermore, because the subject of the initiative recently had become the target of
government policy, it was being hailed as an example of good practice, and these agencies were
now claiming the credit. Clearly, this does not provide a good basis of trust for future
relationships.
The need for public sector organizations to have their involvement in a collaboration
acknowledged might be pertinent to their ability to secure future funding on which their survival
may depend. In contrast, in the private sector, the concern is usually directed at the extent to
which individual organizations’ aims are met via the collaboration, so “taking credit for joint
achievement” may not be so much of an issue. However, the relationships between power,
control, and trust are similar. In their comparative case studies of four United States-China joint
ventures for example, Yan and Gray (1994) found that a partner’s bargaining power is positively
related to the partner’s management control in the joint venture. Similarly, they found a positive
relationship between control and performance, but significantly, they also found that trust would
moderate this. Thus, a high level of mutual trust between the partners could lead to both partners’
needs being satisfied, even if one partner is dominant.
Similarly, in the public sector, the issues of credit recognition and “territory control” are closely
tied and often a matter of real significance to those involved. For small, single-issue
organizations commonly found in the not-for-profit sector, there is always a concern about losing
control over the way in which their own organization may proceed in dealing with its sphere of
activity. At the extreme, if their issue area becomes central to the collaboration, their external
funding may be transferred from them to the collaboration. The very existence of the
collaboration may thus become a threat to the existence of the organization. Control in this
context appears typically to be exercised through aiming to influence-or even sabotage-other
organizations’ and the collaboration’s agendas (Eden & Huxham, 2001). The organization is
dependent on ownership of the issue for its survival-its “context based bargaining power” (Yan
& Gray, 1994) as such is low because it has a very high stake in the issue and few or no
alternatives available to it. The concern with its own survival (Sharfman, Gray, & Yan, 1991)
necessitates the need to take control to gain recognition for credit and retain the legitimate right
to address the issue.
For larger, public agencies, the issue often arises out of overlapping agendas and a need to justify
their existence. For example, where agencies have overlapping or identical physical boundaries,
we have seen many examples of one organization apparently taking control through taking a
strong lead in the creation of an “overarching” plan for the area and then aiming to influence the
behavior of the others in line with the plan. Interestingly, managers in these “leading”
organizations rarely seem to recognize that their actions could be interpreted in any way other
than collaboratively, so their power apparently is often manifested perfunctorily. Those in the
“influenced” organizations are, not surprisingly, often much more aware of the power struggle.
Our data include many statements about the difficulties associated with management control and
about willingness or not to let others take control over shared issues. Some have argued that trust
building is dependent on discouragement of “touchiness about each others’ territories.”
In the absence of trust, similar concerns about imbalance in partners’ management control can be
found in the private sector. The positive link between level of control and performance naturally
means that managers are concerned and only willing to relax control in situations where trust is
high (Yan & Gray, 1994). Such practice-oriented notions of control through influencing, and its
relationship to trust, take a rather different focus to those that derive from research based in
economic exchange where trust is seen as a component of-or substitute for-control mechanisms
such as contracts that govern economic transactions (Bradach & Eccles, 1989; Fryxell et al.,
2002; Gulati, 1995; Inkpen & Li, 1999). This may be, in part, because government policies
throughout the world increasingly are leading to contractual relationships between public
agencies and private organizations (Coulson, 1998), including those in the not-forprofit sector. In
socially oriented collaborations, setting up a contractual relationship is not generally an option
that is considered feasible. Participants therefore are forced to focus on softer control
mechanisms to manage the power relationships. Notions of trust as a lubricant for collaborative
transactions (Das & Teng, 1998; Dasgupta, 1988; Oliver, 1997 Ring. 1997) and as a complement
or supplement to control (Beamish, 1988; Das & Teng, 1998) more closely relate to this.
Perceptions About Building Trust
Many authors write about trust as though it were a precondition for successful collaboration
(e.g., Cullen, Johnson, & Sakano, 2000; Das & Teng, 1998; Kumar, 1996; Lane & Bachmann,
1998). Indeed, Rule and Keown (1998) argue that the “development of trust is one of the most
important alliance competencies” (p. 3). This presents a practical dilemma to those considering
setting up a collaboration where there is no history of relationship between (at least some of) the
participating organizations or where previous relationships have not engendered mutual trust.
The discussion above suggests that this will frequently be the case. A central issue that practice-
oriented theory must address, therefore, is how trust can be built and sustained.
Practitioners’ views relate to all the collaboration themes and include the following:
* have clarity of purpose and objectives,
* deal with power differences,
* have leadership but do not allow anyone to take over,
* allow time to build up understanding,
* share workload fairly,
* resolve different levels of commitment,
* have equal ownership and no point scoring,
* accept that partnerships evolve over time, and so on. Other researchers capture similar points
(see, for example, Butler & Gill, 1995; Child, 2001; Das & Teng, 1998; Lyson & Metha, 1996;
Ring, 1997). Emphasis tends to be put on the importance of communication in particular and the
need to communicate and share information on a range of issues (Cullen et al., 2000; Das &
Teng, 1998; Webb, 1991).
Although the above suggestions provide good reminders of the variables that contribute to trust
building, they do not provide much in the way of pragmatic help because each piece of advice
brings with it its own collection of difficulties in implementation. It may be argued that a
pragmatic way forward is to get started without first dealing with all aspects of trust building.
This probably means aiming for modest but achievable outcomes, in the first instance, becoming
more ambitious only as success breeds a greater level of trust. This supports the argument
captured in the trust building loop in Figure 2.
Over the past 5 years, we have had many opportunities to discuss the trust-building loop with
practitioners and other researchers interested in this topic. Both researchers and practitioners
have found it conceptually appealing. For researchers, it provides a neat synthesis and summary
of relevant literature, and for practitioners it provides a v
