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Trust Trap? Self-Reinforcing Processes in the
Constitution of Inter-organizational Trust
Guido Möllering and Jörg Sydow
1 Introduction: Problems of Trust Development
This chapter points to the peculiar nature of trust as a property of inter-
organizational relations that may be desirable though not easily established,
but also sometimes undesirable though hard to abandon. We argue that this is
due to self-reinforcing processes that may be slow to get started but that tend
to spiral up to levels that essentially lock organizations into their trust-based
relationships, even when the trust has been jeopardized.
The perspective we ofer is needed in order to understand better how trust
works and how inter-organizational relations are not only initiated, but also
maintained or, if necessary, terminated successfully. This is a practically rel-
evant issue, because organizations are biased towards favoring continuity over
change, especially when relationships have been working well for a while and
trust between the partners has become institutionalized. They may thus nd
themselves in a position where change is no longer possible when problems
arise. An extreme example is the Apple vs. Qualcomm battle that emerged
from what used to be a very lucrative relationship for both sides for a long
time. An even more interesting example is the relationship between Microsoft
and Intel: their close collaboration has been pointed out, alternately, to explain
both their huge successes and their trailing behind the competition over the
last few decades. How many currently trustful and successful alliances may be
headed for a lock-in scenario and to what extent can this be explained by the
trust they developed?
Stevens et al. (2015) studied the issue outlined above in the context of the
automobile sector. Their research focused on the possibility of reorienting
and recalibrating inter-organizational relationships towards an optimal level
of trust and away from excessively high (or low) trust levels. However, while
their study illustrates the remedies very well, it does not explain the origins
of the problem and it, therefore, overestimates the malleability of inter-
organizational trust, especially in the kind of situation of locked-in trust, men-
tioned already by Nooteboom (1996), that we refer to as trust trap (a metaphor
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that also appears in Skinner et al., 2014). We deliberately invoke this extreme
lock-in scenario, although even Apple and Microsoft seem to nd ways of nd-
ing new partners, not to mention Qualcomm and Intel. How dicult this is for
them gives an idea of the strength of the self-reinforcing forces that we will
discuss and that still need to be better understood with a view to the social
dynamics of inter-organizational relations.
In the following parts of this chapter we rst revisit the “old” problem of how
trust may be conceptualized and developed at the inter-organizational level.
This leads to the “new” problem that, still somewhat counterintuitively, trust
may not always be desirable between organizations. It follows that we then
need to look at the “real” problem of possible trust lock-ins, which is to be seen
as part of the “larger” problem of self-reinforcement leading to persistence and
even path dependence in inter-organizational relations. The chapter ends with
a discussion of preliminary ideas on how the trust trap problems may be solved
and, more importantly, how future research might shed further light on these
issues in order to advance theory on trust and inter-organizational relations.
2 The “Old” Problem: Trust between Organizations
In research on inter-organizational relationships, trust became a prominent
construct in the 1980s and 1990s when it was mobilized in order to explain
hybrid organizational forms (Powell, 1990; Williamson, 1991) and especially the
growing prevalence of strategic alliances and joint ventures (e.g., Borys and
Jemison, 1989). Authors such as Bradach and Eccles (1989) even talked about
trust as a third governance mechanism besides price and authority. Powell
(1996) also discussed “trust-based forms of governance” and how diferent
inter-organizational forms are enabled by trust to a greater or lesser extent.
Many other authors demonstrated conceptually (e.g., Ring and Van de Ven,
1994) and empirically (e.g., Sako, 1992) the importance of trust in inter-
organizational collaboration.
However, the underlying conception of trust was – and it often still is – rooted
in psychology and thus it has mostly been framed at the individual and in-
terpersonal level. Trust is dened as people’s positive expectations in the face
of vulnerability and uncertainty towards other people (e.g., Rousseau et al.,
1998). One of us (Sydow, 1998) pointed out early on that while individuals and
interpersonal trust should be taken into account, more sophisticated concepts
are needed to explain the constitution of trust at the inter-organizational lev-
el, that is, beyond the interpersonal trust between boundary spanners: “How
can systems trust systems?” (Sydow, 2006). Zaheer et al. (1998) take credit for
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including both trust in a partner organization’s representatives and trust in
the partner organization at-large, arguing that individuals cannot only have
trust in other individuals, but also in collectives. Still, if organizations can be
trusted, does it also make sense to say they are trusting as organizations in
individuals or in other organizations?
One of us (Sydow, 1998, 2006) applied structuration theory to show that trust
at the inter-organizational level can be constituted as a set of practices that
(re)produce trust as a meaningful pattern of interaction which, as such, is not
separated from the actors involved but not dependent on specic individuals
either. Thus, acting on trust and trustfully becomes an “organizing principle”
governing the interactions between organizations in general and in various
forms of strategic alliances in particular (McEvily et al., 2003). The other one
of us (Möllering, 2006) referred to neo-institutional organization theory and
ethnomethodology in order to explain why trusting is often a matter of rou-
tine and taken-for-grantedness. When people interact across organizational
boundaries, they are guided by rules, roles and routines which apply generally
and contain expectations as to the level of trust that is appropriate to display
within an organization or across an organizational boundary. This makes trust
not only a “social decision” (Kramer et al., 1996) but an (inter-) organizationally
constituted practice (Lane and Bachmann, 1996), which implies that, when
people leave, trust stays and newcomers will be socialized into the same prac-
tices. To the extent that this is the case, one can speak of trust as constituted
and institutionalized not only within but also between organizations.
More recent research has taken up this question again, asking in particular
how trust emerges and becomes institutionalized (e.g., Kroeger 2012; Schilke
and Cook, 2013; Vanneste, 2016). Many models rely on a bottom-up process
whereby individual trustful interactions are tried, repeated, observed, imitated
and, thus, difused up to the point where they are seen as the normal and ha-
bitual way of interacting with the other organization. Although authors use dif-
ferent theoretical foundations, this process resembles Berger and Luckmann’s
(1966) theory of institutionalization. We would like to emphasize that Berger
and Luckmann point to second-order objectivation as a process that stabilizes
institutionalized practices and ensures their continuity (see also Möllering,
2006). Thus we may expect that inter-organizational trust can be observed in
how representatives of the organizations involved interact routinely and also
in how they make sense of their relationship and perceive it as being based on
trust (e.g., Adobor, 2005).
The considerations above give rise to several additional issues that we can
only refer to selectively in this chapter. We will not discuss in more detail the
fact that there are of course a number of diferent organizational and societal
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levels and layers beyond the individual which could be the medium and object
of trust institutionalization (e.g., Fulmer and Gelfand, 2012). All the more, we
may ask if inter-organizational trust is only a matter of emergence – behind
the actors’ backs as a by-product of their interaction (e.g., Sabel, 1993) – or
a matter of active development and intentional management (Gausdal et al.,
2016). This is important, given that we will later talk about the threat of a trust
lock-in which, as such, assumes little agency in inter-organizational processes:
the idea of a trust trap connotes rather helpless trustors and trustees. Hence
we also acknowledge the potential of active trust development (e.g., Child and
Möllering, 2003) as well as recent research on multi-level trust that points to
various forms of action in order to account for inter-organizational trust devel-
opment (e.g., Swärd, 2016a).
Moreover, as we consider in detail below, we need to emphasize our assump-
tion that, from a practice perspective informed by structuration theory (Gid-
dens, 1984) and new institutionalism (Scott, 2014), inter-organizational trust is
not static, even when properly constituted, but dynamic (e.g., Möllering, 2013).
With this in mind, we need a better understanding of when and how trust can
(still) be inuenced by the actors involved. This question is crucial especially if
we acknowledge that trust may not always be desirable and there may be situ-
ations where the partners might want to reorient or recalibrate their trust (Ste-
vens et al., 2015) if not abandon the relationship completely. Interestingly, in
an early process model of inter-organizational relationship development, Ring
and Van de Ven (1994) not only postulated the possibility of renegotiation over
time, but also suggested that successful collaboration will lead to ever stronger
bonds between the organizations involved.
3 The “New” Problem: Downsides of Trust
It is well established by now that trust is not always desirable and may have its
downsides such as carelessness, complacency or ineciency (see also Zaheer
et al., 1998; McEvily et al., 2003). In this view, positive efects from trust are not
denied but there is a notion that one should not trust too much, because a
“surfeit” of trust (Kern, 1998) or “excessive trust” (Gargiulo and Ertug, 2006) can
make it “too much of a good thing” (Langfred, 2004) in interpersonal as well as
inter-organizational relationships (see also McAllister, 1997). This has usually
led researchers to conceptualize “optimal” trust as the level of trust that would
be appropriate for a given relationship at a given point in time (e.g., Wicks etal.,
1999; Gargiulo and Ertug, 2006; Bidault and Castello, 2009; Molina-Morales
et al., 2011; Stevens et al., 2015). We argue that it is important to acknowledge
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the dark sides but that there are several problems with the notion of optimal
trust, too, which are necessary to keep in mind when considering if and how
organizations may get trapped in undesirable trust relationships.
Firstly, most work on the dark side of trust makes a rather quantitative
point (‘too much’) and does not diferentiate according to the qualitative con-
tent of trust (‘wrong kind’), which seems equally relevant to us. Irrespective
of its strength, trust may involve expectations that are not favorable to either
or both sides of the relationship. For one, trust may be “spurious” (Fox, 1974),
i.e., not genuine, but still referred to and supercially relied upon. In this case,
the positive outcomes of trust may not be forthcoming and one may rather
observe the “politics of trust” (Culbert and McDonough, 1986) where, for ex-
ample, empowerment is introduced cynically. Skinner et al. (2014), in a review
of the dark-side trust literature, describe ve exemplary scenarios where trust
represents a “poisoned chalice” and has negative consequences for at least one
of the parties involved. Even when the context is less political, trust may not
always be welcome, but hard to avoid, and feeling trusted can lead to outcomes
such as exhaustion (Baer et al., 2015). Skinner et al. (2014) speak of “lock-in”
(see also Nooteboom, 1996) and it remains to be explained, especially at the
inter-organizational level, why it may be so hard to avoid not only too much
trust, but also the wrong kind of trust. Therefore, we take a closer look at the
dynamics of trust below.
Secondly, the optimal trust literature assumes that excessive trust can be
balanced by (re)introducing elements of control (e.g., Wicks et al., 1999; Gar-
giulo and Ertug, 2006). However, this idea relies on an outdated conceptual-
ization of trust and control as being separate and substitutional mechanisms
while it is very well established by now that trust and control are inseparable
and complementary in how they work in relationships (e.g., Bijlsma-Frankema
and Costa, 2005; Jagd, 2010). While both views allow for a general notion of bal-
ancing trust and control, the duality of trust and control (see Möllering, 2005)
adds that actors have limited control over control, because it is entangled with
trust and also with knowledge (Sydow and Windeler, 2003). This is important
to remember especially when asking why relationships continue even though
trust may have been broken and outcomes are seen as undesirable. It hinges
very much on the trustors’ ability to assess and, potentially, adjust the relation-
ship, which is neither trivial between individuals nor between organizations.
This leads to uncertainty as the third issue related to the dark side of trust,
the notion of optimal trust and the threat of inter-organizational lock-in. Inter-
estingly, known in various specic meanings as the trust paradox (e.g., James,
2002; Zaheer and Zaheer, 2006), trust is presented as a solution to uncertainty
that works when markets and hierarchies fail; but in as much as trust deals
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with a lack of knowledge, it cannot be fully justied by knowledge. Trustors
accept vulnerability as if it were unproblematic, but in this they take a leap of
faith (Möllering, 2006) also in inter-organizational relationships (Latusek and
Vlaar, 2018). They may regret in hindsight that they trusted a partner in the
past, but this does not mean that they can reliably assess if their trust in cur-
rent partners is justied in the present, nor if they should continue trusting in
the future. To be sure, and to cut a long story short (see Möllering, 2006), there
may be quite obvious signals that a partner should not be trusted and that a
relationship should not rely mainly on trust, but the point is that even when
partners are carefully selected and to some extent still monitored, it remains
impossible to maintain an optimal level of trust, simply because it cannot be
known. Hence, optimal trust is a contradiction in terms. More importantly,
downsides of trust are not easily detectable. Where exactly are the thresholds
between openness and carelessness, loyalty and complacency, exibility and
ineciency? When do strong ties turn into a weakness (e.g., Grabher, 1993)?
And how can organizations realize that they have passed such thresholds?
What if, when they do, it is too late?
4 The “Real” Problem: Self-Reinforcing Dynamics of Trust
So far, we have highlighted that inter-organizational trust requires the institu-
tionalization of certain practices. Now we take a closer look at the dynamics of
trust development. We have also argued above that trust may have positive or
negative outcomes which are impossible to fully predict. Now we add the point
that positive outcomes, understood as goals, are moving targets and change
along with the relationship (Huxham and Vangen, 2005). Both extensions are
in line with, and called for, from a structuration theoretical understanding of
trust practices (Sydow, 2006) as well as various process views of trusting (Möl-
lering, 2013). In order to further develop the idea that relationships could get
locked into trust, we will also review insights on the robustness of trust that
contradict the common assumption of trust’s fragility.
In research on inter-organizational governance, Nooteboom (1996) con-
rmed the crucial role of trust and presented a process model whereby trust
is part of a cycle of relationship development. Quite a number of other contri-
butions contain the same basic idea so that it is actually surprising that most
trust research continued with rather static research designs. Process perspec-
tives looking at the dynamics of trust have only recently started to receive
more attention again (Möllering, 2013; Jagd and Fuglsang, 2016; Latusek and
Vlaar, 2018), although a well-known spiral reinforcement model of trust at the
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interpersonal and group level was already proposed by Zand (1972; see also
Golembiewski and McConkie, 1975). And, two decades later, Ring and Van de
Ven (1994) included trust in a general model of inter-organizational relation-
ship development. Like in an earlier paper (Ring and Van de Ven, 1992) they
assume that trust emerges from positive interaction outcomes over time, sub-
sequently serving as a basis for less formalized interactions in the future (Ring
and Van de Ven, 1994; McAllister, 1995).
This approach is in line with social exchange theory (e.g., Blau, 1964; Skinner
et al., 2014) and the widely accepted idea of gradual trust development that
Blau (1968: 454) summarized early on as follows: “Social exchange relations
evolve in a slow process, starting with minor transactions in which little trust
is required because little risk is involved and in which both partners can prove
their trustworthiness, enabling them to expand their relation and engage in
major transactions. Thus, the process of social exchange leads to the trust re-
quired for it in a self-governing fashion” (see also Möllering, 2006: 85) that is es-
sentially driven by norms of reciprocity (e.g., Serva et al., 2005; Vanneste, 2016).
These and many other conceptions of relationship development as well as
general models of trust development (e.g., Mayer et al., 1995) postulate some-
what casually that positive outcomes of trust will lead actors to continue act-
ing on the basis of trust, so that trust, but inversely also distrust, becomes
“self-amplifying” (Sitkin and Stickel, 1996; see also Bhattacharya et al., 1998).
Crucially, they also predict that trust will grow stronger, become more resilient
(Ring, 1997) while the level of vulnerability increases and necessitates further
trust (Misztal, 2011). And trust will also change qualitatively from deterrence-
based trust to knowledge-based or even identication-based trust (Lewicki
and Bunker, 1996). If successful trust-based interactions lead to stronger and
profounder trust as a basis for further interactions, where does the relationship
end up?
In a functionalist or mechanistic feedback model, we would assume that
trust levels out when more trust does not result in better outcomes anymore.
We would also assume that negative outcomes will disrupt trust, set it back to a
lower level, from which it can hopefully be repaired (e.g., Kramer and Lewicki,
2010; Tsui-Auch and Möllering, 2010; Bachmann et al., 2015), or the relationship
will be terminated. However, while this may happen in many cases, trust is
actually more robust than it is often assumed.
A psychological explanation was ofered by Good (1988) who reviewed evi-
dence of the conrmation bias in the context of trust. Once a certain level
of trust has been reached, trustors look for evidence that the partner is trust-
worthy and they ignore or discount evidence to the contrary. The robustness
of trust may also be explained by fundamental attribution errors (e.g., Ross
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and Nisbett, 1991) that conrm one’s own choice of partner, especially as long
as outcomes are positive. More interesting is what happens when things do
not go well. Interestingly, when trust is already strong, one can also witness a
kind of collective self-serving bias in combination with the conrmatory bias,
so that disappointments in the relationship are initially explained by external
circumstances and not by problems within the relationship or by the partners’
lack of trustworthiness.
External attribution also takes the blame away from trustors who could
otherwise be challenged for misplacing their trust. Moreover, research has
demonstrated in many ways how reluctant people are in detecting and voicing
undesirable behaviors in others, especially unethical ones such as deceiving
or defecting (see O’Sullivan, 2009). Even stronger, trustors and trustees build
and maintain a positive image of each other and interact in what deception
research would call a “shared delusional system” (Mitchell, 1996: 841; see Möl-
lering, 2009) that perpetuates trusting relationships.
Hence, breaches have to be fairly drastic before the trustor reconsiders, pos-
sibly too late. Inter-organizational practices of trusting may equally be sluggish
in their readjustment and it is probably desirable that trust does not break
down too easily, but the inherent danger is obvious, too. Alternative, though
not competing, explanations point to the emotional attachment, identica-
tion and sense of a moral duty that develops between trusting parties (e.g.,
Simmel, 1950; Jones, 1996; Lewicki and Bunker, 1996; Ring, 1997; Kramer, 2001).
Can these explanations also be applied at the inter-organizational level? Al-
though Gulati et al. (2000) talk about network lock-in caused by delity and
loyalty, we support Zaheer et al.’s (1998: 142) warning not to “anthropomor-
phize the organization”. Instead, a multi-level analysis of organizational and, in
particular, inter-organizational trust is needed (Sydow, 2006; Fulmer and Gel-
fand, 2012). Nevertheless, trust practices may imply that a sense of attachment,
identication and obligation toward another organization is routinely passed
on to new members and thus institutionalized beyond specic individuals, for
example, in a long-term buyer relationship with a company like Toyota. Even if
this idea is generally acceptable, we suggest that trust research needs to take a
closer look at other, less psychological explanations for the robustness of inter-
organizational trust in the face of negative interaction experiences.
Before we look at such explanations below, note that all of the above ex-
planations contain the idea that trust will be robust, and no longer “fragile”
(Ring, 1997), once it has grown to a certain level and when, guratively speak-
ing, trustors really lower their guard. (Before this level, cautious trust may not
even be regarded as proper trust.) Most spiral reinforcement models referred
to above would suggest that trust gradually becomes more robust. However, it
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might also be the case that the mode of trusting switches at a specic “tipping
point” (Perlow and Repenning, 2009) from cautious testing to complete com-
mitment. For example, Lewicki and Bunker’s (1996) model envisages that trust
does not simply grow stronger but changes in quality as deterrence-based trust
is supplemented by knowledge-based and identication-based trust. Similarly,
trust may difer before and after partner selection, whereby once enough trust
has been established to commit to a partner, this partner is no longer treated
with suspicious reservation but fully supported (e.g., Johansen et al., 2016).
Altogether, trust is self-reinforcing, it changes its character as it grows, and
the transition between weaker and stronger modes of trusting may not be
gradual but step-wise, which might explain why individual and organizational
actors can be “stuck” at relatively high (or low) levels of trust that do not cor-
respond precisely with their recent experiences in the relationship. We think
it is important to understand if there are such thresholds that, once crossed,
cannot easily be reverted, because they imply a degree of commitment and
involvement that is hard to drop. This would explain why trust is fairly robust.
5 The “Larger” Problem: Inter-organizational Path Dependence
We will now turn to self-reinforcing processes within and between organiza-
tions in general with two aims in mind. First, the mechanisms identied can
serve as insightful analogies for inter-organizational trust development. Sec-
ond, we need to be able to distinguish between relational lock-ins in general
and those that are specically, or predominantly, caused by falling into the
trust trap rather than by other factors, such as resource dependence (Pfefer
and Salancik, 1978; Grabher, 1993).
The spiral reinforcement models of trust development mentioned above
and others (e.g., Shapiro, 1987) which, by the way, can also be applied to explain
the escalation of distrust (Bijlsma-Frankema et al., 2015), resonate with a rich
organizational literature that has pointed out self-reinforcing processes within
and between organizations (see Sydow and Schreyögg, 2013). On the whole,
organization theory has been disappointingly silent on this topic and em-
pirical research in particular has been stuck in static, cross-sectional research
paradigms for too long. Still, there are various organizational studies and con-
cepts from other disciplines that provide a solid basis for conceptualizing self-
reinforcing processes in general and inter-organizational path dependence in
particular. Interestingly, even the more recent process and practice turns in
organization research, especially if adopting a strong rather than moderate
process perspective (e.g., Tsoukas and Chia, 2002; Langley et al., 2013), tend
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to overlook the importance of self-reinforcement. We will review and discuss
some of the core ideas in the following paragraphs.
Some classic studies on self-reinforcing processes at the individual and
group level may also inform inter-organizational trust research. For example,
the phenomenon of escalating commitments (Staw, 1981) may explain dys-
functional inter-personal trust (McAllister, 1997) but also a general reluctance
of boundary spanners to abandon relationships that they have already invested
in personally. Janis’ (1982) notion of group think, which includes the idea that
the overemphasis on cohesion within the group is self-reinforcing, can be ap-
plied to excessive in-group trust and overcondence of an inter-organizational
team that manages an alliance. As our perspective on inter-organizational re-
lations focuses very much on practices of interaction between organizations,
we acknowledge that self-reinforcing mechanisms at the individual and inter-
personal level have to be taken into account in order to fully understand how
practices are enacted. At the same time, we are mostly interested in how the
practices themselves can become self-reinforcing, which requires looking be-
yond the actors involved. In other words, we doubt that inter-organizational
path dependence, including a possible trust lock-in, can be explained by
individual- or interpersonal-level phenomena only.
At the organizational level, there are several well-known phenomena that
are explained by self-reinforcing dynamics such as, for example, the compe-
tency trap (Levinthal and March, 1993; Becker, 2004), speed trap (Perlow et al.,
2002), strategic commitment (Ghemawat, 1991), bureaucratic circle (Gouldner,
1954), silencing conict (Perlow and Repenning, 2009) or knowledge manage-
ment circles (Garud and Kumaraswamy, 2005). The basic principles underly-
ing these phenomena entail that a reinforcing feedback loop operates, from
a certain point onwards, so that two variables positively inuence each oth-
er, meaning that an increase in one will lead to an increase in the other one,
which in turn increases the rst one further and so on. This suggests inter-
esting questions such as how the process got started in the rst place, how
it became self-reinforcing (rather that self-sustaining), or how the automatic
escalation might still be stopped.
We propose to use theoretical insights from organizational path depen-
dence (e.g., Sydow et al., 2009; Koch, 2011; Dobusch and Schüßler, 2013) that we
have applied and developed in our previous research also with a view to inter-
organizational relations (e.g., Sydow et al., 2012; Burger and Sydow, 2014). In a
nutshell, path dependence theory entails a number of premises and explana-
tions that could be particularly relevant for explaining the threat of a trust trap
in inter-organizational relations. First, with reference to the model described
in Sydow et al. (2009), there is an initial phase where self-reinforcement is not
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yet noticeable, many potential partners and many diferent ways of collaborat-
ing with those partners are still available, limited only by imprinting efects
(Stinchcombe, 1965; see Swärd, 2016b, on imprinting and inter-organizational
trust). The next phase, however, starts after a “critical juncture” at which cer-
tain choices have been made, e.g., to trust particular partners and to enter into
collaboration with them, which subsequently limits the further options that
are available, i.e., alternative partners or alternative governance mechanisms
for the alliance. This will lead the organizations involved to continue and even
intensify their collaboration according to the patterns and practices they have
already developed together. This results potentially in a “lock-in” which makes
it impossible for the partners to switch to other partners or governance modes
in the future. They are bound to continue with each other and to perpetuate
the practices of interaction they have established.
This model holds a number of interesting assumptions with practical im-
plications. First, “critical junctures” are usually not apparent at the time but
only in hindsight, if at all. Second, “lock-ins” severely limit the organizations’
exibility, but this may actually be desirable as long as the outcomes of the
relationship are favorable. What makes path dependence theory interesting, is
that it tries to explain why processes will continue even though the outcomes
are no longer favorable. Third, the model suggests that lock-ins are likely to
arise under the condition of positive feedback or self-reinforcement. But it is
an interesting and dicult to answer question if and how these lock-ins should
be, and could be, avoided before or after they occur. Translating the model to
inter-organizational trust, we thus have to try and specify the meaning of “criti-
cal junctures” for trust and the notion of “lock-in” as a more or less desirable
property of a trust relationship between organizations.
Critical junctures in a trust relationship should be those instances when
perceptions of trustworthiness become trusting practices and the willingness
to be vulnerable becomes an actual state of vulnerability. As long as organi-
zations are still considering many potential partners or entering only cau-
tious initial interactions with a few of them, they may already be narrowing
down their options, but the fragility of their trust also means that they are still
likely and able to switch. Only when they enter into a deeper commitment
with partners and subsequently experience positive outcomes from the in-
teraction are they likely to develop deeper and more resilient trust that will
lead them to reinforce the relationship with the partners rather than investing
in other, less familiar partners. One might even suggest that the situation of
“lock-in” is the ultimate aim of a trustful relationship, whereby all sides have a
primary interest in continuing the relationship and making it as benecial as
possible.
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Then again, since inter-organizational relationships are dynamic in them-
selves and embedded in changing environments, it may happen, for example,
that the positive outcomes from the interaction are no longer forthcoming,
whilst the partners are still attached to, and dependent upon, each other. In
the unfavorable scenario, much depends on whether the parties involved
blame each other for their performance issues or whether they see themselves
as joint victims of outside circumstances. Accordingly, we can expect that
some dysfunctional relations will continue in-spite of a loss of trust, while oth-
ers might persist on the basis of trust in spite of the lower performance. Finally,
contrary to core denitions in path dependence theory, “lock-ins” may not be
so denitive and relationships may still be ended, for better or worse, or even
shifted to a new trajectory that makes them successful again (e.g., Stevens etal.
2015).
In order to apply path dependence theory more specically to inter-
organizational trust dynamics, we believe that insights from social exchange
theory will be useful that are already applied in trust research, as mentioned
above (Blau, 1964). Browning et al. (1995) show with the example of the
consortium that the notion of “self-amplifying reciprocity” can be
applied at the inter-organizational level. We would add to this the idea that
there are critical junctures and lock-in points in such a process.
Given the concepts highlighted above, it will be dicult to disentangle the
self-reinforcing efects of trust from any other factors that contribute to rela-
tional path dependence and lock-in, such as relation-specic investments or
resource dependence, because material decisions taken at critical junctures
are shaped by social dynamics of the relationship in any case. Nevertheless,
it is valid to ask if excessive trust is mainly a contributing factor or the core
explanation of dysfunctional relations that are not abandoned. However, we
think it is a moot point whether a relationship has fallen into the trust trap or
whether trust makes it dicult to get out of some other trap, for example, an
inter-organizational competency trap (see Levinthal and March, 1993; Becker,
2004). We emphasize the dual insight that trust can become locked-in and also
contribute to relational lock-in more generally.
6 Discussion: Stay Alert, Stay Alive?
Inter-organizational relationships in a trust trap may ultimately be abandoned
not because the partners recognized the problem early enough, but because
they simply fail and are forced to dissolve. From an evolutionary perspective,
this may be a good thing, presuming that “healthy” relationships will survive.
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From a management perspective, less cynical solutions are sought after (see
Stevens et al., 2015), which is justied, if the notion of lock-in is relaxed and
some level of agency retained. From a structuration perspective, we highlight
that structure and action shape each other and that “reexive monitoring”
(Giddens, 1984) is performed by those involved. Hence we also presume that
partners in inter-organizational relationships can become aware of the pos-
sible downsides of trust and relational lock-in and do something about them.
However, borrowing an expression from military and terrorist contexts, is stay-
ing alert enough to stay alive?
Our answer to this question has to be semi-optimistic, because actors
will never be able to step outside of the process that is partly driven by self-
reinforcing mechanisms. That is, they may be alert, but they may still misjudge
the threats or not be able to avoid them completely. Still, individual or col-
lective actors may promote mechanisms that work against the escalation of
self-reinforcement – hopefully without triggering a spiral movement in the
opposite direction. For example, as already mentioned briey above, the idea
of balancing trust and control is not entirely misguided, if trust and control
are treated as a duality (Möllering, 2005). Carelessness, complacency and inef-
ciency in a strong trust relationship (e.g., Gargiulo and Ertug, 2006; Molina-
Morales et al., 2011) can be anticipated and the partners can trustfully devise
instruments to work against them, such as the role of devil’s advocate, routine
internal checks or regular external evaluations (see Provan and Sydow, 2008).
The institutionalization of distrust (by control) in order to build and maintain
trust is a familiar notion especially in organizational and institutional con-
texts (e.g., Zucker, 1986; Tsui-Auch and Möllering, 2010) and so is the idea of
institutionalizing doubt – trust, but verify – as a remedy for too much trust
(Shapiro, 1987). This seems reasonable, but may not always have the intended
efect either, because distrust and doubt may ultimately drive out trust and
then become self-reinforcing, too (e.g., Sitkin and Stickel, 1996; Walgenbach,
2001). The optimal balance between trust and control cannot easily be deter-
mined, maintained or adjusted from within the relationship, not least due to
the uncertainty inherent in trust and the entanglement of the partners in the
very practices they may want to alter. Nevertheless, we encourage new think-
ing on path dependence that recognizes the structure-agency duality in seem-
ingly locked-in path extension as well as seemingly heroic path-breaking path
creation (e.g., Sydow et al., 2012). This approach can also inform research and
practice on the successful initiation, maintenance and termination of trustful
inter-organizational relationships.
We hope that future research can build on the ideas developed in this chap-
ter. There is certainly still much left to be done in order to further substantiate
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the notion of a trust trap in inter-organizational relationships. We call for
empirical work in order to get an idea of the prevalence of relational lock-ins
caused by self-reinforcing trust. There are countless inter-organizational re-
lationships that have continued for a very long time, but how can we tell if
they are really path dependent or even locked-in; including whether this is
problematic, and whether this is caused by (excessive) trust? It will be a chal-
lenge to operationalize these questions, but we think it is a challenge worth
tackling, especially if the research also investigates self-reinforcing and self-
sustaining mechanisms at the level of inter-organizational practices. Overall,
the issues we raised conrm the need for research on the dynamics of trust in
general and especially across boundaries between groups, organizations, elds
and so on with longitudinal and cross-level research designs. Trust has a bright
side and a dark side. Collaborations can be benecial or harmful for individu-
als, organizations and even society. We cannot tell in advance which side will
dominate, but we know that self-reinforcing mechanisms are involved when
inter-organizational relationships lose the ability of adjusting their practices.
Acknowledgements
The authors are most grateful for helpful comments and suggestions received
at the “Workshop on Distrust and Conict Escalation” at the University
of Groningen, The Netherlands, 11 January 2016, the Colloquium Sub-
theme on “Trust-based Organizing: Principles and Politics” at Copenhagen
Business School, Denmark, 6 July 2017, and especially the “International Con-
ference on Trust” at Chuo University in Tokyo, Japan, 19 November 2017 orga-
nized by this volume’s editor Masamichi Sasaki.
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