Questions about Trust for the Development of Social Capital and Competence (original) (raw)

Trust, Social Capital, and Organizational Effectiveness

2004

Many authors have argued that social capital is positively related to economic prosperity, regional development, collective action, and democratic governance. But it alone can not explain all of these phenomena in societies. The concept of trust can not be neglected in the social capital literature. Considerable confusion exists concerning the relationship between social capital and trust, namely whether trust is a precondition of social capital or a product of it. This paper begins to explore their relationships by tracing the origins and development of the concept of social capital. It then discusses the relationship between social capital and trust by comparing their origins or sources. Finally, these two ideas are placed in organizational context to develop an analytical distinction between trust and social capital while clarifying and exploring the implications of these two primary perspectives on organizational effectiveness. The paper concludes that trust and social capital are mutually reinforcing-social capital generates trusting relationships that in turn produce social capital.

The social theory of trust and the sociological theory of social capital

Belvedere Meridionale, 2016

Th e paper off ers a theoretical contribution to the post-millennial debates on social capital. Th e sociological theory of social capital is reconstructed via the social theory of trust. Th e paper shows how the various kinds of interpersonal and institutional trust, combined with norms of cooperation form themselves into social networks to be studied by the three ideal types of social capital: bonding, bridging and linking social capital. Th is version of social capital theory lends itself to the complex empirical analysis of varied social phenomena from child abuse to projectifi cation, shedding light both on the sunny as well as on the dark side of social capital, covering also its dynamic aspects.

Being Trusted in a Social Network: Trust as Relational Capital

Trust can be viewed as an instrument both for an agent selecting the right partners in order to achieve its own goals (the point of view of the trustier), and for an agent of being selected from other potential partners (the point of view of the trustee) in order to establish with them a cooperation/collaboration and to take advantage from the accumulated trust. In our previous works we focused our main attention on the first point of view. In this paper we will analyze trust as the agents’ relational capital. Starting from the classical dependence network (in which needs, goals, abilities and resources are distributed among the agents) with potential partners, we introduce the analysis of what it means for an agent to be trusted and how this condition could be strategically used from it for achieving its own goals, that is, why it represents a form of power. Although there is a big interest in literature about ‘social capital’ and its powerful effects on the wellbeing of both societies and individuals, often it is not clear enough what is it the object under analysis. Individual trust capital (relational capital) and collective trust capital not only should be disentangled, but their relations are quite complicated and even conflicting. To overcome this gap, we propose a study that first attempts to understand what trust is as capital of individuals. In which sense “trust” is a capital. How this capital is built, managed and saved. In particular, how this capital is the result of the others’ beliefs and goals. Then we aim to analytically study the cognitive dynamics of this object.

The Influence of Trust on the Trilogy of Knowledge Creation, Sharing, and Transfer

Thunderbird International Business Review, 2015

This empirical article focuses on the phenomenon of trust and its infl uence on the trilogy of the following interrelated factors that are crucial to the success of international business cooperations and their economic results: knowledge creation, knowledge sharing, and knowledge transfer. Trust is expected and desired by many business partners, but it is also abused by others. The term trust, due to its intangible and invisible nature, is often ignored or superfi cially treated by companies. However, when trust does not exist between international cooperation partners or is not nurtured, negative relationships and fi nancial implications occur. These lacunae could be explained due to the difficulty in quantifying as a fi nancial asset. The article presents qualitative fi ndings (from two empirical research studies): (1) the implications of trust development for knowledge transfer between Russian-and German-speaking companies, and (2) the infl uence of trust on knowledge sharing in the completion of an Austrian construction project. The authors applied phenomenological interviewing and observations of critical incidents or signifi cant occurrences, combined with comparative content analysis. The positive infl uence of trust on the aforementioned trilogy results in higher levels of the involved companies' innovativeness, culminating in higher levels of competitive advantage and profi tability. The empirical fi ndings are presented to explain the infl uence of trust on knowledge creation, sharing, and transfer, which have a bearing on intercultural cooperations. One innovative fi nding relates to the differentiated perception of emotions and the implications that this entails.

The Case of ‘Trust’ – Research on Social Capital in V4 Countries

Studies of Transition States and Societies, 2016

The purpose of this article is fi rst to discuss the basic theoretical approaches used to interpret the concept of trust in the context of social capital and then to present the results of research conducted on trust. The analysis concentrates on elements related to trust in the literature, refl ecting the methodological approaches for assessing and measuring trust. In theoretically conceptualising trust, we generally adopt Hardin's explanations (1991, 2002a, 2002b, 2006), which are then used as an interpretational framework for our research results. The paper mainly analyses and interprets subjective conceptual mental maps of trust developed on the basis of associations obtained in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia using the Associative Group Analysis Technique. The participants were management and economics students and there were 100 of them in each country (50 female and 50 male; 50 from each capital-Prague, Budapest, Warsaw and Bratislava; 50 from a smaller town in each country-Ostrava, Szeged, Olsztyn and Prešov). Altogether 400 students in four countries completed the tasks. In this article, we mainly present the results relating to the Slovak section of the research sample.

TRUST AND KNOWLEDGE SHARING WITHIN ORGANISATIONAL CONTEXT

evf.lu.lv

Nowadays in many organisations knowledge is viewed as crucial strategic factor in gaining competitive advantage. This article focuses on the process of knowledge sharing as part of creating new knowledge in organisations. Knowledge sharing is determined to a large extent as social interaction between individuals and groups. Therefore, the concept of trust cannot be neglected in the knowledge sharing research. This article investigates into the concept of trust from the theoretical point of view in order to develop understanding about what kind of role trust plays in the process of knowledge sharing. This paper begins with discussion of the term trust and further classification of trust in the knowledge sharing process. Then, it examines existing thresholds of trust and the concept of risk referring to the potential for giving benefit without receiving something similar valued in return. Furthermore, the trust-building process and in particular the process of making decision to trust is focused on. Finally, the paper discusses the question to what extent the mechanism of trust have an effect on encouraging knowledge sharing within organisational context.