An intercultural concept of trust in management

Summary

The proposed paper takes outset in the findings of a research review on trust in management literature (Rittenhofer 2012) conducted within a transdisciplinary research project MULTI-TRUST. The paper takes outset in the following findings: there is no consensus on trust in management research; the creation and maintenance of trust is seriously underresearched; trust research on the role of culture is only emerging; trust is seriously under-theorized; an interdisciplinary conceptualization of trust is lacking. Finally, existing understandings of trust originate from 20th century philosophy and sociology that do not capture complexity, transformations and changes such as “cosmopolitanization” or ‘globalization from within’, as it relies on ‘a priori science categories’ (Beck 2002) such as ‘culture’, ‘nation’ or ‘identity’.
With outset in the review findings, the paper proposes and discusses a transdisciplinary conceptualization of ‘trust’ that may capture the complexity of cross-cultural contexts and recent transformations. It takes outset in the concept of ‘high-trust relationships’ (Arnott 2007) and combines it with ‘practice theory’ and with intercultural communication. Here, it draws on Plum’s (2007) complex concept of ‘cultural intelligent communication’, as it has a focus on the doings of people and recognizes complex cultural patterns (Mathews 2000).
The proposed paper contributes to mainly to ‘Intercultural business communication’ ‘Internationalization as symbolic practice’ [but also nationalization] , but touches on issues related to ‘Discourses of internationalization’, and ‘Managing cultural diversity’.