MACMILLAN Trust and Organizations: Confidence across Borders

An increasing number of people work in organizations that 'trade in trust'. Institutions such as banks, accounting firms, schools, and hospitals require customers, students, and patients to have confidence in the experience and professional expertise of the staff, as well as in the effectiveness of the regulations, rules, and systems in place for quality control. What mechanisms have developed in modern society to create, manage, maintain, and convey trust in companies, public administrations, and civil society organizations? What takes place in the encounter between different cultures of confidence and what happens when confidence in or between organizations is shattered? Trust and Organizations gathers an interdisciplinary group of academics to contextualize the dilemmas resulting from the institutionalization of trust and confidence in a wide selection of organizational settings. The importance of trust is highlighted in relation to different types of borders or boundaries - institutional, organizational, and geographical - as the overlapping and blurring of such boundaries is becoming one of the main characteristics of an increasingly transnational and re-regulated world. Review "The enormous value of trust for everyday organizational life is widely underestimated in literature. Most mainstream theories focus upon different social forces, e.g. power, control, and normative and institutional pressures, whereas interpersonal and generalized trust is rarely recognized as a vital glue for linking actions in and beyond organizations. Against this backdrop, this volume is especially precious, as it provides a state-of-the-art overview, new ideas and insights on trust from various perspectives." - Michael Meyer, Professor and Chair, Research Institute for Nonprofit Organisations, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria "Understanding trust in an organizational context is a highly innovative way to build a bridge between theories of organizations and theories of society. To what extent can trust be organized and to what extent is trust a precondition for organizing? In this book the contributions provide numerous and unexpected examples of the fruitfulness of this approach. It will be exciting reading for theorists of organizations and society alike." - Göran Ahrne, Professor of Sociology, Stockholm University, Sweden "Trust and confidence are key issues in all organizational life today. This state-of-the-art volume is particularly welcome for raising new questions about the complexity, multi-dimensionality, and interdependence of trust and public life. Provides a host of new and thought-provoking answers, illustrating its insights from a distinctive Nordic and interdisciplinary perspective." - Miriam Glucksmann, Professor of Sociology, Essex University, UK About the Author Johan Fornäs, Södertörn University, Sweden Maria Gustavson, University of Gothenburg, Sweden Bo Rothstein, University of Gothenburg, Sweden Niklas Egels-Zandén, University of Gothenburg, Sweden Ingrid Gustafsson, University of Gothenburg, Sweden Kristina Tamm Hallström, Stockholm School of Economics and Stockholm Centre for Organizational Research (Score), Sweden Lars Strannegård, Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden Pernilla Petrelius Karlberg, Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden Maria Grafström, Stockholm University, Sweden Karolina Windell, Uppsala University, Sweden Eva Hagbjer, Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden Johnny Lind, Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden Ebba Sjögren, Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden Lars Trägårdh, Ersta Sköndal University College, Sweden