Most research on trust has taken a static, “snapshot” view; that is, it has approached trust as an independent, mediating, or dependent variable captured by measuring trust at a single point in time. Limited attention has been given to conceptualizing and measuring trust development over time within interpersonal relationships. The authors organize the existing work on trust development into four broad areas: the behavioral approach and three specific conceptualizations of the psychological approach (unidimensional, two-dimensional, and transformational models). They compare and contrast across these approaches and use this analysis to identify unanswered questions and formulate directions for future research.

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The antecedents of victim willingness to reconcile a professional relationship following an incident involving a broken promise were examined in terms of offender tactics (i.e., nature of apology, timeliness of reparative act, sincerity) and relationship characteristics (i.e., nature of past relationship, probability of future violation) using a within- and between-subjects policy-capturing design. Relatively speaking, relationship characteristics were as strongly related to willingness to reconcile as offender tactics. Furthermore, we found moderating effects of magnitude of violation on the willingness to reconcile a relationship following a trust violation. In particular, nature of past relationship was weighed more heavily, whereas probability of future violation was weighed less heavily when the magnitude of the violation was greater. Practical implications and recommendations for future research are discussed.

Transparency is often cited as essential to the trust stakeholders place in organizations. However, a clear understanding of the meaning and significance of transparency has yet to emerge in the stakeholder literature. We synthesize prior research to advance a conceptual definition of transparency and articulate its dimensions, and posit how transparency contributes to trust in organization-stakeholder relationships. We draw from this analysis to explicate the mechanisms organizations can employ that influence transparency perceptions.

The authors examined the effects of supervisory guidance (providing instruction to employees) and behavioral integrity (a pattern of word-deed alignment) on employee organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and deviant behavior. Results revealed a pattern of Supervisory Guidance x Behavioral Integrity interaction effects, such that relationships between guidance and outcome variables were dependent on the level of behavioral integrity exhibited by supervisors. The interactions suggest a positive relationship between supervisory guidance and OCBs when behavioral integrity is high but also a positive relationship between guidance and deviant behavior when behavioral integrity is low. These results were consistent across 2 independent field samples: 1 assessing individual employee perceptions of supervisory behavior and the other assessing aggregate perceptions of supervisory behavior among employees in bank branches.

This study examined the relationship between mentor trust, protégé internal locus of control, and the mentoring functions reported by protégés. The matched mentor-protégé sample came from a formal mentoring program in China. We found a positive relationship between protégés' internal locus of control and the extent of mentoring functions they reported receiving. Mentors' affect-based trust was positively related to the extent of mentoring functions protégés reported receiving regardless of their internal locus of control. However, mentors' cognition-based trust was positively related to protégés' report of the extent of mentoring functions only for protégés who were lower in internal locus of control. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.

SummaryWe seek to develop a better understanding of interpersonal trust by bridging the gap between two heretofore distinct paradigms of trust. One paradigm views trust in terms of two dimensions: cognition‐ and affect‐based. The other paradigm views trust as being distinct from trustworthiness, which has four dimensions: ability, behavioral integrity, benevolence, and values congruence. Currently, theoretical consensus is lacking about the antecedents of cognition‐ and affect‐based trust in the first paradigm that incorporates insights from research on trustworthiness in the second paradigm. We show that this lack of consensus is problematic for internal knowledge development and external knowledge expansion. Thus, we join both paradigms by theorizing that ability and behavioral integrity are the most important predictors of cognition‐based trust, whereas benevolence and values congruence are the most important predictors of affect‐based trust. Across two samples, we found that our predictions were largely supported. Based on relative weights analysis, ability and behavioral integrity were more important than values congruence in predicting cognition‐based trust, and benevolence was more important than ability in predicting affect‐based trust. Furthermore, we found evidence that these relationships were largely robust to changes in the referent of analysis.

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