AnIntegrativeModelofOrganizationalTrust

Copyright of the Academy of Management, all rights reserved. Contents may not Academy of Management Reviewbe copied, emailed, posted to a listserv, or otherwise transmitted without the 2007, VoL 32, No. 2, 344-354.copyright holder's express written permission. Users may print, download, or email articles for individual use only.EDITORS FORUMAN INTEGRATIVE MODEL OF ORGANIZATIONAL TRUST: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE F. DAVID SCHOORMAN Purdue UniversityROGER C. MAYER The University of AkronJAMES H. DAVIS University of Notre DameA considerable amount of research has examined trust since our 1995 publication. We revisit some of the critical issues that we addressed and provide clarifications and extensions of the topics of levels of analysis, time, control systems, reciprocity, and measurement. We also recognize recent research in new areas of trust such as affect, emotion, violation and repair, distrust, international and cross-cultural issues, and context-specific models, and we identify promising avenues for future research.As we wrote our 1995 paper on trust (Mayer, Davis, C. L. Scott, 1980), the dominant conceptual and operational344This content downloaded from 130.194.20.173 on Fri, 22 Nov 2013 05:17:43 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions2007Schoolman, Mayer, and Davis345definition of trust in the literature was Rotters (1967). We then went the next step and included ability as an antecedent of trust that allowed a party's trust to vary within a given trustee but across domains. The dispositional aspects of trust considered by Rotter are contained in the construct of propensity to trust in our model. The literature that has followed our model has not questioned this decision and has accepted the view that trust is based in relationships. Application Across Levels of Analysis The importance of multilevel and cross-level perspectives is gaining increasing attention in organizational research. This has led to a call for examining trust across levels of organizational analysis (e.g.# Rousseau, Sitkin, Burt, Mossholder Rousseau, 1985). We have heard from a number of scholars that the 1995 framework is fairly robust across levels of analysis. A bit of history on the development of our theory may shed light on this issue. Early drafts of our paper developed our trust model across multiple levels of analysis. One of our initial goals was to develop a theory that would be applicable across levels of analysis. We were careful to develop constructs that would cross levels of analysis, and we developed examples of how cross-level applications of the model would work. Perhaps it was fortunate that early reviewers of our paper made the accurate observation that the paper was very cumbersome (and long) because it developed the multilevel model. They recommended that we restrict our paper to a single level. The fact that our initial goal was to develop a multilevel theory is probably why the model works as well as it does across levels, but we do agree with those who argue that one of the weaknesses in much of the current trust research is that it is limited to re- lationships at a single level of analysis, considering either dyadic trust relationships within organizations or trust between organizations. Several authors have recognized differences in trust for single referents at different hierarchical levels within an organization (e.g., Cook Driscoll 1978; D. Scott, 1980). Recentresearch points out that trust should be examined at both the macro and micro levels within an organization (McEvily, Perrone, Zaheer, McEvily, Rousseau, 1985). lust as perceptions about an individual's ability, benevolence, and integrity will have an impact on how much trust the individual can garner, these perceptions also affect the extent to which an organization will be trusted. We defined each of these trustworthiness dimensions so that it could be applied to interpersonal, intergroup, or interorganizational levels of analysis. At higher levels of analysis, such as between organizations, viewing the trustee in terms of ability and integrity seems to be well accepted. At macro levels of analysis, however, benevolence has received little attention. We defined benevolence as the extent to which a party is believed to want to do good for the trusting party, aside from an egocentric profit motive. Does the other company hold the focal company's best interests as highly important? While we may be able to identify situations, such as sole proprietorships, where the owners have strong bonds that display significant benevolence toward one another, the more traditional mode is probably one wherein each company is motivated primarily by its own financial interests. If this is indeed the norm, benevolence is not likely to be the most important factor in the development of interorganizational trust. However, acts of benevolence (e.g.# allowing benchmarking) from