Introduction

During the last three decades the academic interest in the notion of trust as a sociological concept and a vital ingredient in organizational and managerial contexts has increased as well in number of publications as in diversity of perspectives (e.g., Atkinson 2004; Bijlsma-Frankema and Costa 2005; Child and Möllering 2003; Dietz and Hartog 2006; Gillespie and Dietz 2009; Kramer and Tyler 1996; Kramer 1999; Lane and Bachmann 1998; Lewicki et al. 2006; Li 2007; Mayer et al. 1995; Rousseau et al. 1998; Saunders et al. 2010). The significance of trust to organizational traditions and researchFootnote 1 is also evident in academic publishing of special issues (e.g., Bachmann et al. 2001; McEvily et al. 2003), and edited volumes (e.g., Cook 2001; Kramer and Cook 2004a, b; Lane and Bachmann 1998).

In these and other publications however, it is noticeable that trust seems to remain a rather abstract and difficult to pin down term. Trust as a quality of and in human interaction somehow seems to resist research where instrumental or categorical methods are provided. Trust seems to crumble between our fingers when related to the features of accountability and control. Authors addressing trust or trust related issues point at these problems, and consider the state of research on trust as being in conceptual confusion (e.g., Barber 1983; Kramer 2006; Lewis and Weigert 1985; Mayer et al. 1995; Nooteboom 2002). We suggest in this paper that the problems as they are frequently referred might be of another kind than mere theoretical misperceptions. We ask how a reinterpretation of trust would concern our understanding of organizational trust if the emergence of trust as profound phenomena of responsibility and care in human lives was highlighted. We note that in the context of formal work life organization, especially in private companies, trust often seems to be transformed into a device for economic success and development. To avoid a subjugation of trust to a means for the economic market, we imply trust’s potential in being experientially and academically critical and autonomous. We ask how trust is presented and discussed within organizational research, and wonder how the human qualities of the phenomenon might gain a fuller potential in organizational practices if a phenomenological awareness of trust’s intrinsic experiential qualities were taken into consideration.

Within the scientific tradition of trust research the tradition of rational choice and game theory emanating from economics, has become a classic way to study trust (e.g., Coleman 1990; Elster 1989; Gambetta 1988). Many of the classic contributions to this tradition though, are from the 1980s and 1990s, and their rational view of trust has been criticized (e.g., Kramer 1999; Mayer et al. 1995; Möllering 2006). Trust studies today tend to interpret trust within a broader understanding including human qualities other than rational choice (e.g., Gillespie and Dietz 2009; Lewicki et al. 2006; Möllering 2001, 2006). As the paper intends to demonstrate however, the majority of studies even within the broader understanding of trust, in some way or another are influenced by ideas that emanate from a technical and economic rational understanding. These ideas are recognizable in sectors of business, management, work life and professional organizations. The traces of rational modern-man-ideology might be inherent in the processes of rationalization and intellectualization of the industrial and technological development of the modern world (Weber 1975). The idea of the rational man that is in almost infinite control and the master of his or her surroundings by planning and calculation, as Weber (1975) describes, more than three decades later still seems to influence how we think of social interaction inside and outside of organizations. By preferring accountability, efficiency and control on the expense of diversity, ambiguity and unpredictability and the more democratic models of human coexistence, social and organizational research have problems to engage with questions related to trust as part of a general and ambiguous human existence. One of the intents of this paper is to demonstrate that the underlying assumptions of organizational and related approaches to trust still to a considerate degree promote the idea of the reflected, rational actor. Even though different approaches see trust as a dynamic and multi-faceted phenomenon, also contemporary studies of trust are influenced by assumptions connected to an instrumental rationality. Our intent is not to reject or undermine the important contributions of different sociological and organizational studies of trust. Rather, we want to state the importance of a continuous looking at experiential facets of the trust phenomenon, and highlight it’s’ ambiguity and uncertainty characteristic of all kinds of human qualities. Many contemporary organizational studies and theories of trust acknowledge the many dimensions and ambiguities of trust (e.g., Möllering 2005, 2006), but still we may recognize underlying assumptions connecting trust to the idea of the modern, rational man. Our point here is to highlight how ideas of rationality of trust still are part of contemporary trust studies, although often hidden as basic ontological assumptions. As such, the first part of the paper is not a complete review of central trust research within sociology and organization studies. Rather, the selected studies present central structures in a varied selection of social science trust research.

Trust has become a cross-disciplinary research area, and trust research can be found within sociology, political science, economy, psychology, organization and management studies (e.g., Child and Möllering 2003; Coleman 1990; Hardin 2002; Kramer 1999; Mayer et al. 1995; Nooteboom 2002). In this paper the point of departure is the connection between classical, sociological dilemmas, trust and working life. Classic sociological studies are introduced in the first section because trust’s part of a rational modernity ideology is evident in sociology (e.g., Giddens 1990, 1991; Luhmann 1979; Misztal 1996). The prime assumption of the rational human being of modernity substantially impacts values and ideas underlying how we talk of and study trust. In section two of the article we analyse more recent phenomenological studies of trust in working life situations in order to further discuss how trust can be studied in organizational contexts.

Through a selection of foundational structures forming the academic view of human and organizational trust we analyse how these structures are visible in a variety of trust studies. The basic structures are interpreted differently in the diverse texts and will therefore present a selective but varied range of studies. The main selection consists of sociological studies of trust of the classic modernity theories (e.g., Giddens 1990, 1991; Luhmann 1979). The ambition is to show how rationality is discernible in different ways and shapes in a variety of studies where ideas of modern, rational man are present. Rational trust is evident as well in other subject traditions like economics, psychology, and organization and management studies.

Part two consists of a selected overview of empirical phenomenological studies in trust. As the organizational research context is rather limited when it comes to the phenomenological traditions, we have expanded the search for relevant articles with keywords like “work,” “leader,” “employee,” and “manage,” to obtain a wider and interdisciplinary selection of articles for review. The selected articles were published in the period from 2000 until 2015. All kinds of work life contexts are included: health, especially nursing, marketing, organization studies, and others. Still, to be able to select pertinent and relevant contributions, we have picked articles that define their approach as phenomenological. The result is that different phenomenological methodological approaches are included in the review. Philosophical or pure theoretical contributions are not among the selected articles, as an empirical-methodological approach was a selection criterion. The intent is to explore how trust is employed in real life contexts, and how trust is be understood and studied in work life situations. In addition, some of the studies do not approach only the phenomenon of trust, but rather different phenomena related to trust, where trust however plays a central part of the analysis of the phenomenon in question. Through the analysis of the different studies we discuss possible experiential understandings of trust, all of which can be useful in organizational and work life research. We ask how experiential trust might be studied in real work life situations, including organizational research. Our belief is that the presented work life studies representing different scientific traditions, might imply understandings of trust that can be transferred to organizational contexts. Concluding, we employ Endress and Pabsts’ understanding of trust as modes of basic trust, reflective trust and habitual trust (2013). Their different modes of trust aid our attempt to find a possible way to combine phenomenological methodology and organizational contexts. Trust as basic, reflective and habitual, as Endress and Pabst describe, are relevant for the discussion and conclusion we try to form, and thus are included as a link between the two parts of the text.

Part One

From Rational to Experiential Trust

What are the present problems of today’s research of organizational trust? We believe, as suggested by a number of scholars that in order to challenge the inherent ideas of rationality underlying most of the studies of organizational trust, more is required than including different dimensions and types of trust, or by studying trust in the context in which it evolves, (e.g., Bachmann 2011; Lewicki and Bunker 1996; Lewicki et al. 2006; Sako 1992). In many classical sociological theories trust in itself is not really the issue, but trust is the function or consequence of something else, e.g., power, social integration, or organizational performance, or trust is seen as a function or capital (e.g., Misztal 1996; Giddens 1991; Luhmann 1979). In the field of organizational research trust is often presented as a multidimensional phenomenon (e.g., Kramer 1999), and the need to see trust as a multidimensional phenomenon is underscored. Trust is considered several different phenomena and is based on separate aspects like power, performance or economy. Some see how trust varies according to organizational contexts (e.g., Bachmann 2011) and the basics of trust – what trust is – often is presented by looking at variations of trust in specific contexts. There seems to be confusion with regard to what trust is, what it looks like and what it means. Dietz (2011) for example, argues for a deeper look at the basics of trust by going to its sources, and ask the simple question, on what basis we trust people. He refers to basic trust mechanism as modeled by Mayer et al. (1995) and calls for trust studies that study trust’s universal dynamic. The basic mechanism, according to Mayer et al. (1995), relates to an attitude or willingness to be vulnerable and take the risk to trust. The willingness incorporates an assessment of the other’s ability, benevolence and integrity, which defines this person’s trustworthiness. Dietz (2011) develops Mayer’s model further when asserting that this willingness is important, but not enough for trust to emerge. We also need a behavioral manifestation, an act of risk, to make trust “happen” (Dietz 2011; Eikeland 2015). Dietz develops a form of cyclical dynamic of trust. The willingness to trust, or the other’s trustworthiness, and the actual act of trust feeds back to a new consideration of trustworthiness. This dynamic is universal, Dietz says. “There is only one essential ‘trust experience,’ and this sequence is it” (Dietz 2011: 215). We believe Dietz has taken a good step toward trust as an ambiguous and experiential phenomenon by assuming that trust is a coherent experience rather than a fluctuating expression.

Dietz’ insight of a deeper understanding of trust prompts a question: “How do we do it”? Scholars in organizational research attempt to understand and explain trust by developing models, types or conceptualizations of trust. But how may these models help us understand trust? Classical sociology states that trust does not refer back to any identifiable or observable act, behavior or experience (e.g., Luhmann 1979; Mayer et al. 1995). Conceptualizing an already abstract and fluid term is difficult and in consequence what the term refers back to becomes increasingly unclear. Instead of further conceptualizing of an already abstract and fluid term, we intend to turn to the lived experience of trust and to how trust might emerge in the everyday lives of human beings in relational encounters. Perhaps an option might be to look for trust in the experiential world of human beings in order to let trust show itself to us. To study trust phenomenologically, as a lived experience, does not deny that there might be different types of trust in different contexts. But here the question is not how trust emerges, evolves and looks like in this or that relation or group, but what the characteristic qualities of trust and the trust experience might be. In phenomenology we try to identify the characteristics that constitute trust. We look for the structures that identify trust and distinguish trust from other human phenomena. We suggest that what trust is and how trust is lived and experienced, also might be relevant to organizational research.

In order to explore a dynamic experience of trust, a social constructivist perspective initially might be of some help. Building on the classic text of Berger and Luckmann (1967), the idea is put forth that all kinds of acts in our world in some way are created and re-created by the human being, and that society and social phenomena are products of our human mind. We cannot perceive or relate to our surroundings without the subjective experience of them. We also as subjects change and establish our surroundings in order to make sense of reality (Dey 2002). Organizational phenomena like trust, emerge, change, are reduced and sometimes destroyed by us, and as they are socially constructed, we relate to the discourses that are established when interpreting the meaning and value of the different phenomena. In a social constructivist view, people are active participants in the creation of trust, and the phenomenon is created within social contexts (Child and Möllering 2003). Trust is therefore worked and re-worked continually, not only when it does not function properly (Lewicki and Bunker 1996).

When talking of trust, however, we often return to terms influenced by market and efficiency. Trust is often interpreted through metaphors like “trust building,” “trust production,” or “trust repair” (e.g., Lewicki and Bunker 1996). This is not unique for trust studies. It is a general trend that human phenomena are influenced and changed by rationalization and market thinking that quickly expands from the business sectors to the experiential sectors of human life. Also qualitative and interpretive perspectives interpret trust within a rational ideology by for instance seeing trust as trust production (e.g., Möllering 2006). There seems to be a lack of language available for us that can provide an alternative understanding of trust. Language itself is a language for logic, rationality and clarity (Aasland 2009), and thus language too is less open to ambiguity and risk. We talk of sense-making, a perspective often used in connection to social constructivism (Weick 2001), and often takes precedence of that which presents itself as logical and simple. To understand trust as an experiential phenomenon is more difficult when language is perceived a rational tool. We suggest though that trust as an ambiguous phenomenon can be studied in all contexts; including organizational research. We believe that we might make sense of trust for trust’s own sake rather than merely as a tool for or function of economic success or social order. From this basis we intend to explore how trust as a human phenomenon is understood and interpreted within different work life contexts. These contexts include but are not limited to encounters between patients and nurses, interaction between leader and employee, and project work. What are the experiential qualities of trust in these contexts, and how is trust visualized as an experiential phenomenon?

The human ‘lived experience’ is one of the key terms in phenomenology (Dilthey 1985; Husserl 1910–1911/2006; Merleau-Ponty 1958), and refers to the “intent to explore directly the originary and prereflective dimensions of human existence” (van Manen 2006: 570). Phenomenology, the scientific study of experience, implies to study trust with “an attempt to describe human consciousness in its lived immediacy, before it is subject to theoretical elaboration or conceptual systematizing” (Jackson 1996: 2). To describe life as it is experienced thus is different from a conceptual, rational and logic approach to a theoretical and abstract idea of trust.

The lived experience of trust shows the inseparable connection between the human being and the world we live in. We act, live and experience our surroundings pre-reflectively before we reflectively think of them. Merleau-Ponty (1958) considers phenomenology the study of essences, although essence in phenomenology is not to be understood as essentialism, but as a description of experiential structures. To study the lived experience of trust is to study the meaning-structures of the experience as ‘lived through,’ and to speak in a language that attempts to express the experience as close to it as possible without ruining its experiential qualities. Van Manen, with Heidegger, asks: what is the nature of the experience; what makes it what it is and not any other experience (2006)? To study trust as a phenomenon is to study a personal, subjective experience. Lingis (2004) suggests that in trusting someone we primarily address the other as person, not as a role (e.g., employer, father or colleague). Trust is first of all a relational experience carrying the intersubjective meaning that makes it recognizable as experience for human beings (van Manen 2006), but resists being a generalized or rationally controllable experience.

Trust takes place in all kinds of relationships. Human beings trust others and are inseparable from the relations they partake in (Emirbayer 1997). According to Emirbayer (1997) relationality is the favoured alternative to a substantialistic way of thinking, where the world consists of stable and static things or substances. In social sciences “it is substances of various kinds (things, beings, essences) that constitute the fundamental units of all inquiry” (Emirbayer 1997: 311). An alternative to the stable things and substances is a relational perspective where persons and units are inseparable from the relational or transactional context in which they are embedded. Social phenomena like power for instance, might thus be studied in relational terms with dynamic, process features rather than as an individual structure. The object of study here would not be the individual in different sets of contexts, but the transactional context between persons (Emirbayer 1997).

Emirbayer’s micro-relationality as transactions between individuals, is different from looking at social life and encounters in postmodern or late modern societies. The latter is characterized by relationality seen as responsibility in moral relationships where one person meets the OtherFootnote 2 (e.g., Bauman 1993; Levinas 1998; Lingis 1994, 2004; Lögstrup 1956/1971, 2008). The link here is though, that in organization studies trust as a relational phenomenon is conceptualized as a kind of transaction (e.g., Rousseau et al. 1998). In the context of a relationality of responsibility, on the other hand, trust is an act directed towards the Other. While transactional relationality presupposes reciprocity and interdependence from the individual, relational trust is dependent on the other but not as a mutual exchange of duties. In a rational transaction of favours the individual is the unit and his or her interest is supposed to be the personal outcome of the relation. Trust as an emergent act of responsibility towards the Other, on the contrary, orients to the need of the Other and is non-reciprocal. To Bauman (1993) moral as a non–reciprocal act is vital for society. He suggests that “they supply the raw material of sociality and of commitment to others in which all social orders are moulded” (1993: 13).

Non-reciprocal relationality has its basis in the lived experience (van Manen 2006), and trust as lived experience has to be lived through to make experiential and relational sense. To Lögstrup (2008) trust as responsibility and care for the other adds potential meaning in our lives, but is out of reach to us if we deliberately try to make use of it. He sees trust as a sovereign expression of life that emerges and withdraws in concrete life situations, independent of rational control and management (1971).

Levinas (1998) on his side, makes us aware of the irreplaceable responsible moments of acknowledging self and Other. Trust might emerge when a person meets the Other and acknowledges self and the Other as unique and irreplaceable human beings. Lingis’ (2004) underscores the Levinasian point that the experience of trust always is a personal appeal to the Other. As we see it, Lögstrup, Levinas and Lingis are the three philosophers whose thoughts in particular offer an alternative approach to the study of trust in organizational life. They highlight the potential of trust as a social and human moral quality. If trust lacks the potential of responsibility and care, and in situations of expected reciprocity, trust loses the constitutive qualities that makes it what it is and not something else (e.g., reservation, doubt, distrust). Then trust becomes a managerial tool and might turn to it’s resemble or contrast (Lögstrup 2008).

The term ‘assumption’ employed as a device to understand the rational undercurrent of trust in organizational research, indicated underlying structures of human understanding that is rarely questioned by the person or group. For the sake of organization studies, as within professions and professional frames in general, we tend to take certain ways of thinking for granted. We are of course aware that the pot should not call the kettle black, and thus that assumptions are underlying our interpretations as well. In any case, assumptions form tacit beliefs and unquestioned standards that may lead to everything from depriving work relations to contradictory research practices. By discussing what we interpret as five common assumptions of trust in today’s organization studies, our aim is not merely to question and critique them, but also to indicate alternative understandings that might support an understanding of trust as a morally and experientially oriented reflective practice in organization studies.

Looking for basic assumptions or premises means to look for ideas and hidden values that our organizational behaviour rests on; the unspoken assumptions that form our view of who we are as human beings and how we relate to the world around us. The existence and creation of the formal organization as phenomenon is basically about rationality, as organizing is seen as a means to achieve goals of economic success (Sørhaug 1996). In order to consider organizational life something more than a rational device to success, includes the awareness of the basic assumptions and the ideology that these phenomena are upholding. In order to try to develop an alternative or additional understanding of trust, we intend to examine basic assumptions central to how trust is conceptualized in classical sociology, other social sciences and organization studies.

The Assumption that Trust Should Produce the Best Outcome

The assumption that a person’s decision to trust or not is contingent by what leads to the best possible result for him or her, and that trust therefore is a rational choice of beneficial outcome for the person, seems to originate from rational choice theory mixed with game theory. Rational choice theory originates from politics (Hardin 1993, 2001, 2002), economics (Chiles and McMackin 1996; Williamson 1985, 1993) and sociology (Coleman 1990). According to Kramer (1999) rational choice theory has a definite position in organizational trust research as the idea of making efficient choices in dilemma situations where a decision is called for. Trust, as the individual’s conscious choice makes decision-making logical and observable, Kramer notes (1999: 572). Rationality is seen as the means of the individual’s interests, and trust is the act of choosing the action that produces the best result for the individual. The rational choice perspective focuses on the individual’s motivations and beliefs, and explains behaviour as reasonable, outcome-oriented and based in self-interest (Misztal 1996: 77). Trust is the positive outcome that might be achieved as a result of choosing the behaviour that is the most efficient and rational in the situation.

Rational choice approaches frequently apply game theory methodology when decision-processes are being analysed. Here “each actor considers what others are likely to do and then makes the best choice to attain her end, given the probable behaviour of others” (Misztal 1996: 78). A distinction is made between rational choice theories that rely on social norms and moral contexts, and those that do not. Coleman (1990) for example, assumes that the rational actor is driven by self-interest, and unconstrained by norms, while Elster (1989) on the other hand, considers trust both normative and driven by self-interest. Gambetta (1988) argues that trust as a form of reliance in the likeliness that other people will behave in predictable ways, is a precondition for social cooperation. He writes:

[W]hen we say we trust someone or that someone is trustworthy, we implicitly mean that the probability that he will perform an action that is beneficial or at least not detrimental to us is high enough for us to consider engaging in some form of cooperation with him. (1988: 217)

From a rational choice perspective we tend to consider to trust or not a question of perceived trustworthiness and the probability of the other’s predictability. Still, it seems that most of the last decade’s scholars see the study of trust as critical to rational choice and the prime basis of organizational trust (e.g., Kramer 1999; Kramer and Tyler 1996; Mayer et al. 1995; McAllister 1995; Misztal 1996). Misztal points to the distinction between trust in formal relationships and trust between friends, and asserts that trust as a rational choice,

(…) does not capture the nature of trust in intimate relationships, where friends or partners trust each other’s good will towards them. […] In this context the role of trust is to narrow down the set of viable outcomes by limiting the number of strategies at the player’s disposal by subordinating self-interest to social norms. (1996: 82)

A subordination of self-centredness and personal outcome, and the interdependency of social norms, clearly move trust from a self-oriented interest to a socially oriented human contract. However, one might ask if trust as a predetermination of social norms still is trust. To advance the discussion of trust as the means of favourable outcome, Nooteboom’s (2002) attempt to refurbish the connection between trust and economics might be noteworthy. Economic perspectives on trust traditionally regard trust a calculative and rational choice, but as Nooteboom claims:

[T]rust is not dealt with adequately in mainstream economics because that does not adequately deal with radical uncertainty. Trust can be calculative, but must inevitably go beyond calculation to wager behavioural options that are unknowable. (2002: 6)

Are the ‘unknowable’ options of trust also components in Kramer’s claim that rational trust includes a “social orientation toward other people and toward society as a whole” (1999: 573)? Along with Mayer et al. (1995) he seems to see trust as a logic choice that involves social and emotional aspects. None of them however, reflect on what the “unknowable” options of trust might be.

Rational choice theory seems effective when analysing instrumental and logic facts based on strictly rational action. Rationality is less successful however when dealing with a variety of actions motivated by passions, emotions or pro-social orientations. Misztal asserts that rationality “does not explain traditional actions that arise from the habits and routine of everyday life” (1996: 88).

Kramer on his side argues for a “contextualist account that acknowledges the role of both calculative considerations and social inputs in trust judgments and decisions” (1999: 574). Even Hardin (1993), who theoretically supports a rationality approach, argues for trust conceptualized as a three-part relation, one of the three parts being the specific context in which trust is developed. Others show how different kinds of contexts give rise to different types of trust each belonging to special circumstances, and having their own dynamics and origins (e.g., Lewicki and Bunker 1996; Maguire et al. 2001; Sako 1992).

Rational choice behaviour presumes that we are able to predict how others will behave (Elster 1989; Gambetta 1988). To predict how others will behave however is not really a possibility. Even though we know from experience that trust to a certain degree is formed by the context, risk and faith are also intrinsic qualities of the meaning and mechanisms of trust. Thus trust cannot be fully predicted or predictable. We intend in the succeeding second part of the paper to show how the more insecure elements of trust like ambiguity, complexity and intuition are visualized in different kinds of work life studies. How may these studies help us understand and further explore the phenomenon of organizational trust (Dane and Pratt 2007; Li 2011)? One relevant question then is if we as human beings always are in the position to reflect and evaluate rationally on what is the best outcome, as the rational outcome theories assert. Could there be other forms of trust connected to organizational emergency situations where trust appears spontaneously and quickly as part of a shared human concern (e.g., Meyerson et al. 1996)?

The Assumption that Trust is Created as a Reflected Action

Recent trust research poses a loud quest for dynamism and context to the concept of trust (e.g., Möllering 2006; Bachmann 2011; Kramer 1999). This quest indicates a need to go deeper into the basics of trust as stated by Dietz (2011) earlier in this paper. To see trust as a human state refers to a common understanding linked to psychology that also has been influencing scholars in organization and management studies (e.g., Rousseau et al. 1998; Mayer et al. 1995). Trust as a psychological state refers to cognitive processes that are underlying the emergence of trust, and thus goes beyond and deeper than the purely rational choice (Kramer 1999). Rousseau et al. (1998) argue that the cognitive, psychological state is a widely held cross-disciplinary characteristic of trust. They assert: “Trust is a psychological state comprising the intention to accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations of the intentions or behavior of another” (1998: 395). By including terms like “willingness to be vulnerable” (Mayer et al. 1995), confidence and positive expectations (Rousseau et al. 1998) we might end up understanding trust as a reflected, intended and progressive state of being. Rousseau et al. say: “Trust is not a behavior (e.g., cooperation), or a choice (e.g., taking a risk), but an underlying psychological condition that can cause or result from such actions” (1998: 395). As something that is underlying our actions and choices, the basic mechanism of trust is not an unconscious structure that frames our thoughts. Rather it is a cognitive model of a state of perceived risk, vulnerability, and positive expectations towards the other part, while considering his or her behavior. The basis is considered to be the trustor’s willingness to be vulnerable (Mayer et al. 1995).

By seeing trust as a psychological state, and the basic mechanism constituting trust as something that takes place between individuals, fragile experiences like vulnerability and risk are acknowledged as characteristic elements (Rousseau et al. 1998). Because the behavior of the other is uncertain and cannot be predicted, risk is inevitable. Although the individual is the main objective and interdependent quality of trust, this includes a relational quality. Interdependence here might mean that the interest of one party cannot be achieved without reliance upon another (Rousseau et al. 1998), and thus trusting comes out as vulnerable.

The problem however, is that the risk and vulnerability might be part of what we want to calculate and control. Vulnerability is acknowledged as a characteristic part of trust, and the decisive point is if it can be planned for as part of a willed intention. Rousseau et al. mention relational trust as a type of trust that “involves a broader array of resource exchange (including socio-emotional support, as well as concrete resources)” (1998: 400). The thought of the rational individual however, still structures trust as cognition. Rational choice has been traded with reflected intention, will and expectation.

The focus on the cognitive aspects of trust has been criticized for being too narrow, and as Kramer asserts, “trust needs to be conceptualized as a more complex, multidimensional psychological state that includes affective and motivational aspects” (1999: 571). A multidimensional understanding, as Fine and Holyfield name it, includes a “world of cultural meanings, emotional responses, and social relations … one not only thinks trust, but feels trust” (1996: 25). Cognition then might include tacit knowledge and internalized cognitive scripts underlying our choices and reflections (e.g., Bachmann 2011; Giddens 1991). Bachmann (2011) criticizes contemporary trust research for not being sufficiently attentive to the institutional context where trust is embedded. In a complex world of expert knowledge and institutions, trust also includes a kind of system-trust that makes it possible to live and work in the late modern world (Giddens 1990; Luhmann 1979). Mainly, though, system trust is a reflective, conscious trust that unlike interpersonal, unreflective trust has the cognitive base of “trust in trust”. Trust in trust is a conditional belief that because others trust the maintenance of a rationally ordered society, one’s own trust is safeguarded. Misztal sees this pragmatic trust in other people’s trust as a problem that “empties the concept of trust of any objective reference or moral content” (1996: 76). Yet, Bachmann (2001; 2011) shows how trust permeates modern society and is part of our underlying and tacit assumptions in how we act and communicate. The embeddedness of trust helps to understand relational contexts and trust’s emergence in work life situations. As mentioned above, organization and management studies emphasize the quest for a more dynamic and processual view of trust (e.g., Bachmann 2011; Kramer 1999; Möllering 2006). This is a critical response to studies based on a positivistic and behavioral tradition (e.g., Coleman 1990; Williamson 1993), but also to studies where trust as a psychological state is the basis (e.g., Mayer et al. 1995; Rousseau et al. 1998). Dietz (2011) criticizes the view of trust as a psychological state for being too abstract and not really incorporating the act of trust. Without the concrete situated act, trust is an abstract concept and not actually risky and uncertain. Even though the cognitive approach focuses on the vital mechanism of trust, the subjective meaning of trust and the act itself is missing. Thus Bachmann’s (2011) understanding of trust as embedded in nearly all life situations opens a potential clearing out of the present abstract and concept-oriented trust research.

Möllering presents an interesting point here, by seeing the leap of faith as the essential element of trust, and suspension of uncertainty as its core function (2006: 110). However, he also considers trust “an ongoing process of building reason, routine and reflexivity […] maintaining thereby a state of favourable expectation towards the actions and intentions of more or less specific others” (2006: 111). Despite the “as-if attitude” and the temporary “bracketing” of uncertainty and vulnerability that constitute the core element of trust, trust in Möllering’s terms still is created by reason, routine and reflexivity, and continually maintained by expectation. Also here trust is the result of a willed intention to trust.

Also Reed, from a realist perspective, considers trust a control generative mechanism that is forming and framing social action through “positioned practices” (2001: 202). He builds on Giddens’ structuration theory (1990) where positioned practices are seen as meditating points between social structures and actors. Meditating points are needed because human agents are constrained as well as empowered by a plurality of indecisive social structures and demands. Reed criticizes theoretical researchers for reducing complex social structures, by not admitting that trust and control relations are interactive and lead actors to creating new combinations of compliance and commitment, power and autonomy, control and trust (2001: 213).

Despite their originality and inventiveness, Möllering and Reed still tend to see trust within the power of man to create and sustain. The ambition to understand trust better in order to preserve, rebuild or extend it more effectively at a time when it has become more important and problematic is still present (Lane 1998). Möllering directs our attention to the power of will to believe, as the mighty designer of trust when human rationality fails. The decent conviction that what we believe is true makes it possible to have favourable expectations of the intentions and actions of others, even if these actions cannot be fully known. Möllering refers to William James’ classic essay on the power of the will:

In this regard, faith would not only be instrumental in getting the process started but is itself a prime example of a self-fulfilling attitude, as James points out: “There are, then, cases where a fact cannot come at all unless a preliminary faith exists in its coming. And where faith in a fact can help create the fact”. (James 1879/1948: 104f., in Möllering 2006: 120; Emphasis in original)

The assumption that trust is within the human power to create, uphold, control and predict, seems to culminate in the idea that faith in trust, in itself creates trust. The social constructivist idea that trust is a human production and has an element of faith that becomes a social reality when we believe in it, nevertheless summons certain problems. Trust is here understood as a theory, and the act of trusting is impersonalized and considered an abstract potentiality that rests in human reason, mental effects, and the organization of predictable systems. According to some organization theorists, the qualities of conscious or emotional human power combined with social structures, order and systems, are capable of creating trust. But we suggest that there also is a possibility that trust might be beyond our beliefs in the rational thought and more than a means of rationalization.

Might trust appear in the midst of the experience or act without any opportunity for the parts to expect anything beforehand? Does trust appear in a situation before any willingness or expectation have had time to be formed? Could it be that trust is incorporated in our practical world of unreflective action, and just happens in the moment, perhaps as a side-effect of a common project or as a life-saving mechanism coordinating rescue operations in an emergency, as Klein (1998) suggests? If trust only happens, without planning or control—how might it be embedded in our lives and routines, and how does the embeddedness ground trust as phenomenon in organizational contexts?

The Assumption that Trust is a Substitute for Control

In the context of professional organizations and business, management, leadership and organizational theory, the importance of trust as a precondition for economic, competitive success and brilliant performance is often highlighted (e.g., Fukuyama 1995; Ring and van de Ven 1992; Sako 1998). Lane, as an example, claims that most of the organization scholars connect trust with positive effects on performance (1998: 19). In economy the positive effect of trust on the reduction in cost of transactions is expected to reduce the need for contractual and monitoring devices (Chiles and McMackin 1996; Sako 1992). The personal obligation towards the common project and business inherent in trust is seen as an alternative to traditional forms of control, like contracts and rules. Cooperation and team projects as well are expected to run more smoothly and effectively if business exchange partners are willing to share knowledge and trust each other (e.g., Child 1998; Sako 1998). New organizational forms like small-scale businesses and networks increasingly enhance more flexible relationships and more trust production (Barney and Hansen 1994; Ring and van de Ven 1992).

Lane (1998) asserts that different bases for trust give rise to different comprehensions of the creation of trust. Scholars occupied with characteristic-based trust and socially embedded trust, claim that trust is not possible to create intentionally but should emerge naturally. Others argue that trust can be created and produced systematically, although the way it is created varies with different kinds of trust (Lane 1998). In business relations though, the frequently shared understanding is that trust should be systematically produced over time because to trust requires experience and acquisition of knowledge of the business partner (e.g., Child 1998; Lane 1998; Sako 1998). According to Sennett (2001), who is writing about the flexibility that characterizes late modern societies, trust has poor conditions in a working life where flexibility and change are more appreciated than stability. The reason is that he considers trust building and trust creation to take time and stability in the labour market.

The conclusion is that if trust should have a positive impact on organizational performance and economic success, it should be systematically planned and built (e.g., Sennett 2001). In a step-by-step trust building process leaders or management are important. Knowledgeable and creative leaders might play a significant role in building trust and reducing distrust. Trust becomes the necessary facilitator for deference of the organization (Kramer 2006), and economic commitment runs smoother through a high level of trust.

There are however, different forms of structures and processes in organizations, and it is not obvious what organizational structures best promote trust (Creed and Miles 1996). Because of its fragility and elusiveness it is hard for leaders to develop a secure development of trust. One might ask if the belief in leaders as facilitators of trust is realistic or not. Is it not a contradiction to be in the role of authority and trust builder at the same time? Or is the problem rather that authority changes when trust is being used as control?

Westwood and Clegg provide a critical analysis of the role of trust in business and note the tendency to exchange traditional forms of control “against more normative, tacit and implicit systems of control and coordination” (2003: 339). They are hesitant to adopt an understanding of trust as the managerial tool that can fix shortcomings in the organization. They consider trust in terms of control a dangerous path to follow as part of managerial strategies, because positive elements of trust are hard to maintain when for example trust is combined with structural unemployment and downsizing in the name of economic rationalism.

When trust is a managerial tool for control of the working stock the positive and responsible aspects of trust tend to be invisible. But the interplay of trust and control mechanisms in the leader-employee relationship is complex. One might see for instance that although the leader has the formal authority to decide, employees form groups of shared matters, and trust may grow or not depending on the employees and the dynamics of the group (Shamir and Lapidot 2003). Möllering (2005) adds an aspect to the informal group building, showing the complexity of the relationship of trust and control and indicating that trust and control are much more than mere opposed phenomena. Instead they are connected in different ways. The rather complex connections between structural elements of the organization and the expectations and behaviour of people, offer connections between trust to and within these various structural contexts.

The Assumption that Trust is a Means to Create Moral Order

In a sociological tradition trust, along with other social phenomena, is placed within the context of society—often as a function of social and moral order—or connected to social change. Misztal (1996) notes how changes in contemporary societies make the construction of trust more urgent, and consequently how order and solidarity become topics for social cohesion. The need for a more visible and active type of trust in society puts functional claims on trust and makes it harder to attain. The need to know more about trust is pressing and in particular how to sufficiently predict and control it. Misztal interprets trust as a “valued public good, sustained by actions of members of a given society” (1996: 14). This definition might overcome the micro and macro distinction stated by Luhmann (1979) and Giddens (1991), by linking trust as a personal attribute to trust as a property of the social system. For example might trust in a local medical doctor gradually increase patients’ confidence in the medical system? Misztal claims: “trust performs a multitude of functions that above all, by keeping our mind open to all evidence, secures communication and dialogue” (1996: 95).

Misztal’s study identifies trust by its capacity for creating social and moral order based on stability, cohesiveness and collaboration (1996: 64). Trust here is considered a kind of social capital that is visible in three forms that “whether understood as habitus, passion or policy, [are] seen not as alternatives but rather as mutually reinforcing types of social capital” (1996: 10). By borrowing Bourdieu’s concept ‘habitus’ in order to designate a special kind of societal trust in the stability of social routines, Misztal constitutes trust as a means for social and moral order. According to her, trust as passion affects the function of trust as social “glue” based on familiarity, bonds of friendship and common faith and values. As a political device trust is capable of coping with regulations of freedom of others as well as of inter-relational issues. Misztal admits that “trust itself presents a problem because it is not a means that can be chosen for a particular end and its achievement cannot be designed and optimized” (1996: 76). But her further analyses of trust state that trust serves as an essential tool for studying social order. How to secure social order and integration in our complex, late-modern society clearly is Misztal’s aim. She claims that a core function of trust is “its ability to play the role of a social lubricant, collective good or social capital” (1996: 96). Trust as a kind of controlled moral resource available to rational management, forms her understanding of social systems. She writes,

This property of trust, indicating that it is in some way external to the individual and able to promote other social goods such as the good of an open society, allows us to assume that it is possible and worthwhile to think about designing rational strategies for the “supply” of trust to the system. (1996: 96)

The idea that trust is a manageable property that can be efficiently and strategically delivered to social systems however, neglects that there might be underlying and unconditional qualities of trust that resist the inherent rationality of social systems. By satisfying the claim for order or by becoming a tool for efficient moral regulation, trust is being transformed into a device for an end outside human relationality.

The Assumption that Trust Reduces Uncertainty and Risk

To Giddens (1990, 1991) and Misztal (1996) trust and trust relations are responses to the condition of increased risk and danger in contemporary societies. By being transformed from personal trust secured by kinship and tradition, to organizational trust in institutions and abstract systems, trust can no longer be taken for granted. The irreversible movement of trust from tradition to reflexive projects requires that trust is actively built and rebuilt and constantly bargained for, even in intimate personal relationships (Giddens 1991). One might say that the risk element of trust as practiced act is diminished. In accordance with Giddens (1991), Das and Teng (2001) and Glückler and Armbrüster (2003) continue to grapple with the attempt to diminish trust in organization management. The idea that trust is based on positive expectations in strategic alliances, and thus includes goodwill and competence, reduces the perceived risk in a relationship, as reported by Das and Teng (2001: 256). If the manager of risk is aware of the kind of trust and control at play in the practical field of the organization, he or she is effectively able to manage and reduce risks (Das and Teng 2001: 277). Glückler and Armbrüster (2003) on their part, see the mechanism of networked reputation as the essential means to manage the risk element of trust in an organization. They highlight the main principle “that a firm’s reputation within a network of business relations presents a key factor of competitiveness” (2003: 271). The networked reputation as well as experience-based trust, is considered efficient mechanisms in bridging the uncertainty for the customer or client. The problem might be that the evident rationalization of trust tends to turn trust into something absolute, fixed and preordained. Giddens’ interpretation of modernity as a risk culture (1991) includes the possibility that to trust is to run a potential risk. Möllering strengthens the quality of risk as an important characteristic of trust by asserting that at the core of trust there lingers ambiguity and ambivalence. He writes:

We often refer to the fact that actors trust despite their vulnerability and uncertainty, although they cannot be absolutely sure what will happen. They act as if the situation they face was unproblematic and, although they recognize their own limitations, they trust nevertheless. This ambivalence […] is not some quirky defect of an otherwise sound concept, but rather the powerful essence of the concept—the particular trick of trust, as it were. (2006: 6f.; Emphasis in original)

The ambivalence of trust, he notes, this quality that also might trap us, belongs to the unique and powerful meaning of the concept. Trust reveals a kind of vulnerability that in principle inheres a risk of harming the trustor. But when the state of trust is reached, the trustor no longer expects to be harmed, and thus the vulnerability is only potential.

The distance in time and space between persons, situations and institutions that might be doing harm to someone, and the fact that the consequences are generally unanticipated, keep the correct moral action out of individual power. The theorists above seem to consider risk embedded in our pluralistic and ambiguous societies. The desire to adapt trust to calculative processes, however, might transform trust into a kind of security, adjusted to order and control in environments with no real need for trust. The ‘weaker’ qualities of trust, like risk, moral decision and potentiality seem to confuse the organizational practices they are supposed to serve. Trust might become strategically traded by the effective means of control and calculation, features that the organization in the first place intended to resist.

Assumption of Rationality and Beyond

Until now we have explored contributions of trust research in terms of how they link to, argue or assume rational ideologies. We have shown how basic assumptions of trust in organizational research seem to build on ideas of the rational, modern man. The classic dilemma of sociology, the integration and existence of society applies trust as the tool for integration, co-operation and solidarity. Trust as social capital in rational ideologies is expected to reduce complexity and conflicts, and is considered the glue that keeps society together. Trust is the element that can achieve social or moral order. Emanating from the sociological tradition as well, is also the idea of society as a risk society. Risk, as a characteristic quality of trust in these settings, is both disturbing and undesirable even if it might induce a stable and secure condition as well as a safe place where individuals can overcome uncertainty and ambiguity by trusting and being trusted. The question is what might actually be the possibilities of trust? Is a postmodern, moral condition, where we no longer can hide from the ambiguity of our surroundings and in our own lives (Bauman 1993) a possible and desirable starting point for organization research? Our suggestion is that trust research might benefit from seeing trust as a phenomenon worthy of studying in its own right. This is important, we believe, because it might open up the possibility of studying trust as a lived experience—an alternative to studies of trust as outcome, side-effect, consequence or function of a rational purpose.

In organizational and management research, trust long has been and still is, a hot topic of research. One main reason is simple: trust as phenomenon is significant to organizational practice. Within organizational contexts trust is explored in a variety of ways and settings. Different types of trust are identified according to relational contexts, and trust development is examined to raise and measure levels of trust (e.g., Lewicki et al. 2006). Others consider trust a choice behaviour, and a cognitive psychological state (Rousseau et al. 1998), or an institutional condition (Bachmann 2011), while some focus on how trust can be built and repaired (Lewicki and Bunker 1996). The quest for processual, multidimensional studies of trust in context (Kramer 1999; Möllering 2006) has opened the interdisciplinary field of trust research for studies that employ different angles and models to a variety of thematic and theoretical approaches.

However, it still seems like some underlying meaning structures are forming and framing the trust research. We suggest that what these approaches look for seems to originate from a technical-rational understanding of the world, and therefore they inherently promote the idea of the rational human being. From psychology the idea of trust as an individual feature of intended and planned cognition seems to aid the idea of the rational man. The researcher, primarily a rational man in the narrow sense of the term rational, consciously seeks stability and safety through the qualities that trust offers. Relational and dynamic qualities of trust still seem mainly unattended. From economics the idea of human rational choice promotes the individual‘s benefits for himself. In studies that conceptualise trust as context dependent, or see different types of trust belonging to different contexts, or studies that focus on trust building or trust repair, trust as a dynamic phenomenon is highlighted. Nevertheless, trust in these settings seems to remain a tool for building or maintaining human relationships in organizations in more or less managerial ways.

Part Two

Phenomenology, Trust and Work Life

In order to describe experiential trust it is vital to explore trust’s inherent meaning, which is not a straightforward issue. The lived experience of a phenomenon is best explored in settings where it shows itself directly and is experienced by us concretely in the context it appears. The experiential qualities of the phenomena surrounding us, like trust, allow us to sense them in the complex context of our natural existence, rather than as cognitive concepts adapted to a research design. Still, we search for trust’s inherent meaning—structures of significant meaning that constitutes and characterizes the phenomenon of trust, and at the same time separates it from other phenomena. Trust is intrinsically linked to and constitutes our relational, ambiguous existence as human beings. To communicate lived experiences as lived through by human beings, a phenomenological way of writing is required trying to express the ambiguous as well as the subjective experience in vocative writing.

An experiential understanding of trust may be enhanced by seeing trust as a sovereign life expression (Lögstrup 2008); a phenomenon that has a certain autonomous quality and partly resides beyond human control and calculations. Trust as a life expression emerges in situations where trust is required, and needs no rational prediction or tool to organize and manage relationality and results. Trust as sovereign life expression occurs in encounters of responsibility and care. Lögstrup’s term ‘sovereign life expression’ (2008) is meaningful in order to understand how trust is a free phenomenon beyond human planning—even beyond the human will and intention. Trust as a sovereign life expression though, is a challenging approach, and does not offer a theoretically clear and easy way to an exploration of experiential trust.

A pertinent question following from the analyses of trust in part one is whether we should see trust as a concept or as a phenomenon? Does trust belong to the human being as a rational tool, or is trust a sovereign expression of life, beyond human calculation? Social science research refers to trust as a concept deduced from theories or ideas (Garfinkel 1963; Luhmann 1979, 1988; Möllering 2001, 2006). A conceptual understanding of trust attributes to logical and reflective human beings that are in control of themselves and the world. Trust here means a logic and rational concept and connotes to terms like ‘trust building’ and ‘trust repair’. More complex and ambiguous qualities of trust are also part of trust as a term in the social sciences, but then often from the tacit assumption of a logical, rational human being. Philosophers and phenomenologists however, see trust as a phenomenon emanating from and returning to human relational experience (Lingis 1994, 2004; Lögstrup 1956/1971, 1993, 2008). Whether trust is understood as a concept constructed within an abstract theoretical basis, or understood as a phenomenon emerging from experiential sources of the human expressional life world, is at the very core of the two different paradigms of trust explored in the first part of the paper and in the part that now follows.

A central concern is how the experiential meaning of trust can be explored as part of our common human existence in work life situations in professional organizations. In order to get foot hold we offer a review of a number of phenomenological publications that combine trust and work life in professional organizations. The selected publications entitle themselves phenomenological. Our analysis shows however, that the studies also employ non-phenomenological approaches. In a review of phenomenological studies of trust in work life, the phenomenal core of trust belongs to its experiential quality. We will in the further analysis show how trust as experiential quality has been studied in a selection of work life contexts. We present and analyse the selected studies according to these categories:

  1. 1.

    How is trust presented in the work life situation(s) in the study?

  2. 2.

    What characterizes the methodological approach of the study?

  3. 3.

    In which relational context is trust present?

  4. 4.

    Is trust understood as experiential trust in the paper?

Our aim is to suggest possible ways to combine elements of an organizational, sociological understanding with an experiential phenomenological understanding of trust. We look for aspects that might open up for a perspective on trust that include both an embedded, contextualized trust as developed in some of the latest organizational research studies and trust as experienced and experiential life expression.

How is Trust Presented in the Work Life Situation(s) in the Study?

Many trust studies are performed on the relationships and encounters of patients and professionals (e.g., Brown 2009; Brown et al. 2011; Goldberg 2008). The professional—patient relationship is often in focus, for instance nurse—patient (e.g., Goldberg 2008; Hilliard and O’Neill 2010), physician-patient (e.g., Brown 2009; Zaner 2000), or practitioners of alternative medicine—patient (Lee-Treweek 2002). Also non-professional relationships are studied, for instance old peoples’ relationship with their house-keepers (Porter and Lasiter 2004). Some health related studies on professional interaction include professional-patient relationships and interaction within multidisciplinary professional teams (Lindgren and Graneheim 2015), interaction between professional and the industry of health related products (Grundy 2014), and interaction between specialist and nurse (Holmberg 2014).

Dinc and Gastmans (2013) review article presenting trust-related studies in nurse-patient relationships is of particular interest here because it actualizes a significant differentiating issue to phenomenological studies. The paper presents a relational understanding of trust where trust as social development through various stages is described as a dynamic phenomenon that is continually changing. The development of trust is dependent on the professional competence of the nurse and on the nurse’s interpersonal caring attributes. The review shows that trust intrinsically is linked to social and relational progress and change, and to how patients relate to the nurse, more than to how the nurse relates to the patient. Trust is a question of how patients trust and how able the nurse is in her profession. Trust here is most fragile and can easily be broken. The reason why trust might break is not because this is the nature of trust, but because human ability is weak and cannot manage to create and maintain trust. Thus the process of building trustworthy relationships is the main issue. The goal of effective treatment and care directs our attention to the patient’s trust rather than to trust as relational experience.

The health related studies included in this review primarily focus on trust as part of the relationship between patients and professionals, or as part of the experience of being ill, or part of the experience of providing care (Brown 2009; Brown et al. 2011; Goldberg 2008; Grundy 2014; Hilliard and O’Neill 2010; Holmberg 2014; Lindgren and Graneheim 2015; Mok and Chiu 2004; Porter and Lasiter 2004; Zaner 2000). Trust generally is considered one of the qualities explored in the experience of the relationship. This was the case as well in the majority of the articles referred to in Dinc and Gastmans (2013). One example is a paper describing trust as the experience of being ill related to the anxiety felt by breast cancer patients (Holmberg 2014). Hilliard and O’Neill (2010) on the other hand explore the subjective trust experience of the nurse in care relationships with children with burns. Both studies examine how nurses experience care as an emotional act and how they deal with their emotions. Because the professional-patient relationship is at the center of the study trust tends to be attached to the development of the relationship rather than being seen as an experiential phenomenon. Mok and Chiu (2004) also see trust as one of the significant aspects characteristic of the relationship of nurse and patient, here for patients in palliative care. Trust is connected to the development of a close relationship when the relationship as a process changes from professional to a personal relationship of dedication and emotion.

Grundy (2014) is basically interested in the nurses’ experience of interacting with the industry of health related products, and how this interaction creates ethical dilemmas for the nurses in their care for the patients. Lindgren and Graneheim (2015) study the meaning of professional care for adults who self-harm, from the perspective of the professional. The recovery process is described as a relational journey toward mutual trust and respect. Goldberg (2008) on her part, implements the term embodied trust in a critical, feminist phenomenological exploration of the relationships of perinatal nurses and women giving birth. Trust is considered experiential and bodily and develops through the relationship between the two parties. Embodied trust characterizes the relationship as well as the subject’s experience of his/her body. Embodied trust is a phenomenon explored also by Holmberg (2014) and Brown et al. (2011), and Holmberg applies a double meaning of trust to her study of patients in treatment for breast cancer. Trust is a quality in the developing relationship between patient and professional, and trust is embodied, e.g., in the relationship between the patient and her body. Brown et al.’s context is gynecological cancer, and the focus is on the patient’s development of trust in the physician. Trust indicators are bodily signs of trustworthiness through the surgical intervention and treatment of the physician. Brown’s interpretation of “embodied trust” basically seems to be related to the physical signs of trust in the professional relation to the patient (not to the patient’s trust to him/herself or the trust to one’s own body).

Brown (2009) discusses trust as communicative action in the relationship of gynae-oncological patients and their physicians. Trust indicates the establishment of a “communicative rationality,” which includes both the subjective experience of care and affect, the norms of the encounter, and the clinical outcome of the encounter. Trust as communicative rationality is interpreted in physical, objective factors. Lee-Treweek (2002) as well explores the process of trust formation and the factors most vital in this formation process. The context of the study is patients’ experience of the treatment of an osteopathic practitioner, and Lee-Treweek problematizes the relationship between face-to-face relationships and a more general level of publicly accepted knowledge of this form of treatment. He claims that the trust of the patient does not mainly concern the appearance or the treatment of the practitioner, but is basically about how the patient strives to find meaning in and of this form of treatment.

Porter and Lasiter’s (2004) study is descriptive and explores trust in the relationship between older widows and their nonprofessional home-care providers. They want to show the importance of the acts of the one who trusts, in this case the widows, to make these acts of trust visible and raise their significance for the experience of trust and a trusting relationship. In Zaner’s (2000) phenomenological study of vulnerability, power and hope in the encounter between patient and professional, trust is at the core. Trust and related phenomena are described experientially on the basis of concrete inter-human encounters, and the author, who himself is a physician, describes his own and the patients’ relatives’ experiences in and of the interaction.

From business sciences we will mention Edgar et al.’s (2015) study on the performance of knowledge workers, in this study represented by researchers, and the role of the front line manager for this performance. Trust is interpreted as one of the factors that influence the performance of the knowledge worker. Friend et al. (2010) as well look at trust in a business context, by identifying spirals of trust and distrust respectively in the retail customer business, in situations where customers are being accused of theft. Based on the experiences of distrust of the customers, Friend et al. suggest how the retailing actor can enact spirals of trust by adding signs of trust into the environment where the customers shop. Strahorn et al. (2015) look at how trust is formed and maintained in traditional construction projects. Despite using the term “lived experiences of stakeholders,” trust is mainly understood as a formation process of personal initiative for action, and by attributing positive qualities to the other. Young and Tseng (2008) study the interplay between physical and virtual contexts in their article discussing the formation of interpersonal trust between teachers in a knowledge sharing community online. Their point of departure is interpersonal trust formation in a virtual, online community of knowledge-sharing among teachers. Both knowledge-sharing and trust formation are strengthened in the virtual community by a combination of real life and virtual, online encounters and interaction.

What Characterizes the Methodological Approach of the Study?

All the selected studies define their approaches as phenomenological. It is evident in reading the texts however, that the term “phenomenology” is interpreted differently in the studies. Some of the health related studies characterize their approach as interpretive and provide lived experience descriptions as the basis of exploration of the phenomenon (Goldberg 2008; Grundy 2014; Holmberg 2014; Lindgren and Graneheim 2015; Mok and Chiu 2004; Zaner 2000). Nevertheless, trust does not really have the leading role in the study, and is not analyzed or described experientially (e.g., as a phenomenon that is humanly lived and experienced different from a concept that is defined or grasped). An exception is Zaner’s study. Hilliard and O’Neill’s approach (2010) is inspired by Husserls’ transcendental phenomenology where the process of bracketing one’s own beliefs and pre-understandings of the phenomenon is in question. The experience itself and how to understand and bring forth lived experiences, are unfortunately not further problematized or explained. Findings are presented, categorized into four main themes that reflect the different aspects of the relationship, and trust as experience tends to fall in between the experiential descriptions of the lived experience of the treatment, and the process or development of the relationships.

In Brown’s (2009), Brown et al.’s (2011), and Lee-Treweek’s studies (2002), trust is analyzed from the perspective of phenomenological sociology inspired by Schutz (1932/1972) and social constructivism. Trust is a fluid issue, processual and dependent on people’s expectation and will. Institutional and structural patterns of meaning established and acknowledged by society, as well as potential adaptation and change of individuals, work together in the formation of trust.

Edgar et al. (2015), Friend et al. (2010), Strahorn et al. (2015) and Young and Tseng (2008) present a phenomenological methodical approach by doing interviews and explore the meaning of persons’ subjective experiences. They combine this approach with an adaption related to certain organizational factors. Young and Tseng (2008) for example, see interpersonal trust as a combination of willingness to trust, transactions, and persons acting together in pursuing shared objectives. Strahorn et al. (2015) look at trust from within the frames of a project in the construction business. The ultimate goal of trust is considered the success of the project. Edgar et al. (2015) speak of trust in relation to work performance, and Friend et al. (2010) advise the retailers to communicate trust through signs/symbols of trust into the environment of the store, and in this way to create more trust. In health related studies, the general trend seems to be an approach in and of lived experiences of the illness, treatment, and relationships between patient and professional. An experiential quality is partly present in these studies, but mostly trust plays a minor role. In the sociological and business studies we find that trust is a tool for more effective organizations, and/or part of an active trust formation, in which we as humans are in control of where and when to form trust. In the further analysis the experiential qualities and encounters of trust from the selected studies will be highlighted. Based on these qualities of the studies, we suggest a possible methodological approach for further studies of experiential trust in work life contexts at the end of the review.

In Which Relational Context is Trust Present?

The majority of traditional trust theories are based on a view of the trusting relationship where the behaviour of the person who is trusted, and the vulnerability of the one who trusts is what constitute trust (Porter and Lasiter 2004). However, is the one who trusts always vulnerable, they ask? In a long-term trusting relationship the initial vulnerability may have faded and lost its significance in the relationship as well as for the truster. If trust equals a willing cooperation, so they assert, the actions of the one who trusts as well as of the one who is trusted are important. One example is provided by the authors through the categorical system of markers of trust that describe the actions of the widows, who signal trust towards their helpers. More importantly is the complexity of the process of understanding and analysing trust, in which the question of what the experience of trust actually is, becomes evident. On the basis of the aforementioned complexity in Porter and Lasiter’s study, we might ask: does the experience of trust “belong” to the one who trusts, or to the one who receives trust? “From where” should we look at trust? Is the experience of trust something that happens somewhere in-between the truster and the trusted? How should we capture the experience—or the two experiences of trust from the two persons involved? Is trust the act of one person opening up to another—or is trust dependent on some kind of openness or action from both persons?

Although not explicitly discussing the complex experiential aspects of trust, the issue of how and from where trust should be seen is present also in the remaining studies (e.g., Brown et al. 2011; Goldberg 2008; Lee-Treweek 2002). Hilliard and O’Neill (2010) see trust as the openness of the child towards the nurse, and how the nurse deals with the relationship and her own emotions. Trust develops gradually as part of the relationship, and is to some degree controlled by the nurse and his/her appearance. Trust though, is also a matter of the right moment, says Hilliard and O’Neill (2010). In an analysis incorporating the conflict of interest between efficiency and limited time to talk, and the responsibility and care felt for each patient, nurses may feel they have missed the moment of possible trust. Hilliard and O’Neill do not explore these moments any further, although such moments may be decisive for the emergence of trust. We might think of the moment as something immediate, which cannot be pre-planned but must be seized when it appears. Trust in the moment resides in the moment itself, as a potential for something more, perhaps for (more) trust, but is not the property of either the nurse or the child. The experience of trust belongs to this specific moment, and is shared by the persons experiencing this exact moment (Saevi and Eikeland 2012). Maybe trust then does not belong to any one of us, and the experience is not to be seen from a definite subject or person, but is a matter of seizing the possibility of the situation. Trust might evolve or emerge as a phenomenon of and in the encounter and disappear when the moment is over (Saevi and Eikeland 2012).

With Mok and Chiu (2004), we are brought back to the trusting relationship, and to the gradual development of trust between patient and nurse. Trust though, develops as part of a mutual understanding, and depends on the experience of the patient as well as of the nurse. Both of the two parties are giving and receiving trust, and giving and receiving are experiences that belong to trust, as Mok and Chiu assert (2004). Goldberg (2008) connects the relational experience to the constitution of subjectivity. The trusting encounter with the other reflects ourselves and makes us see ourselves, our self-trust as well as the trust of the other. On the basis of Goldberg’s analysis we might ask: What does this mean for the experience of trust? Can trust be one-way? Is trust always reciprocal? Can any experience be reciprocal, or how can we understand the experience of trust in a relationship where one trusts the other?

The nurse-patient relationship like all relations between professionals and patients, are based on a structural inequality between them, as pointed out in Mok and Chiu (2004). The asymmetrical structural inequality is present in other kinds of work organizations as well, for example in the relationship between leader and employee, as in the relation of front-line manager and knowledge worker in Edgar et al. (2015). But the structural inequality is not the issue in Edgar et al. (2015), rather the study looks at how the interaction and coaching of the knowledge worker enhances effective work performance. The ideal pursued is a kind of supportive, trusting, transformational leadership. To a reader however, the structural inequality of the context of the study defines the relationships, and describes and represents specific challenges concerning the experience of trust in these relationships. The vulnerability of the patient though, is perhaps more of an ethical issue as the professional might pursue even more control in the relationship, in fact to the point of life and death.

The experience of vulnerability and the complex intertwinement of structural possibilities and experiential trust are vividly described in Zaner’s encounter with a very sick, older woman in hospital, and her husband (2000). The patient is in a poor condition, without the ability even to speak. Zaner describes her vulnerability and the asymmetrical relationship between them as commanding and intense. “Her vulnerability is therefore striking; not only is she compromised by her condition, but she is also disadvantaged by that very relationship” (Zaner 2000: 267). The asymmetry, the absolute power of the physician does not only concern their attributed, social roles, but is very much real; as he says “an existential reality” (Zaner 2000: 267). The physician literally has the possibility and power to hurt the patient. But in this huge asymmetry, in the power contrast, lies a very special kind of attraction, which also awakens a kind of moral reaction. “I sensed it immediately on entering her room: Don’t touch anything! Watch what you say! Note how potent is her very vulnerability; it attracts, directs anyone who approaches to be careful in what is said and done” (Zaner 2000: 270). Her vulnerability, the power difference in the relationship and the intense exposure of the patient, turn the asymmetrical relationship upside down. The patient’s power lies precisely and paradoxically in her helplessness and exposed vulnerability. The other, in this case the physician, feels obliged to act responsible on her vulnerability. “An elemental moral cognizance, leading to a commanding sense of responsibility is buried within this experience” (Zaner 2000: 270). There is an attraction to and excitement about the vulnerability and the total helplessness. It signals danger because of the pressing power and almost unbearable opportunity to take advantage of the trust of the patient. There is a silent power belonging to the patient in this same helplessness, in the moral command of care and gentleness, which would mark the other brutal and evil if he or she were to demonstrate his/her power. But the patient is still completely dependent on the physician, and in this experience dependency and trust seem closely connected.

Mok and Chiu (2004) on the other side, although focusing on affection, have a more distant and analyzing perspective. Their perspective is the personal relationship in itself and its affectionate and existential significance for patient and nurse. Experiential trust reflects and problematizes existential questions such as: who is self and other, and what is the nature of the relationship between them? Zaner (2000) states that a significant part of the responsibility of the other is a mindfulness of the other. To be mindful of the other “augurs a sort of de-centering, an elemental ec-statis—it pulls me beyond myself to her, vigilant to her” (Zaner 2000: 270). Zaner (2000) adds an aspect to Mok and Chiu’s perspective by showing that what is subject and what is other is vague, blurred, and also sometimes shifts as an intended shift of experiential subject, as part of the analysis. Zaner also shows that who is subject and other concerns response and responsibility. To study trust in terms of responses and responsibility for the other might start with the dialogue. What is a dialogue? How do we experience a dialogue with another? The dialogue described in Zaner (2000) happens in the encounter between patient and physician. In this encounter, the initiative has to come from the patient or the patient’s family. The patient asks questions and seeks answers. The point of departure is the need of the patient to know. Asking, however, is more than simple questions and the need to know. The patient appeals to the doctor for a response that requires more than a simple answer. “The question is an appeal to the other to share one’s own questioning, ignorance, and search” (Zaner 2000: 271). To Zaner the dialogue is both a revealing and a sharing of who we are in a common admittance of not knowing and a need to know. The question is an invitation to the other to partake in this questioning and reflecting dialogue with him/herself, a condition that implies admittance of our needs and sharing of our humanness. The response to the questioning is both a response to the other’s need to know, and a responsibility for this response. The need to know is both a need to understand and to be understood.

So, on the basis of Zaner’s experiential descriptions of trust we can ask what does it mean to be responsible for one’s response to the other’s need to know? Is there a difference in being responsible for the other’s response, and being responsible for the other? What about the responsibility for the work life task or project to be completed? As in any work life context, the dialogue needs a problem, some kind of case that the persons doing the questioning and telling, really try to solve. There is a passion in questioning, Zaner says, which can also be valid for different kinds of work life encounters. The need to know is critical to existential dilemmas of life and death. This passion “seeks another’s com-passion (a responsive and responsible response),” says Zaner (2000: 274). Compassion signals both responsibility and availability towards the other. Availability is about potential trust, the potential for responsibility and action. Both physically and mentally, we have to be there when it happens, we have to be alert for the questioning and need of the other. Compassion, to be available for the responsible passion towards the other’s need to know, is vital for trust.

Is Trust Understood as Experiential Trust in the Paper?

Endress and Pabst (2013) in their sociological phenomenology, build their understanding of basic, experiential trust on Husserl’s differentiation between “functioning/operating” (fungieren), and “thematizing” (thematisieren). Trust is an experience of the human encounter, and is part of and constitutes our relational being. The important difference between acting and reflecting on the acting, say Endress and Pabst, is additional to basic trust. Basic trust concerns the trust phenomenon itself, and trust as existential and experiential part of human lives, including also trust as habit and trust as reflection. These latter levels of trust may be thematized, discussed and reflected upon. Basic trust though, is pre-thematic—a part of who we are—and cannot be thematized. Rather it is a constitutive mode of our being, essential for all kinds of relations and social interaction. According to Endress and Pabst pre-thematic trust manifests us as relational beings in our relations with ourselves, others and the world.

Endress and Pabst (2013) suggest that in order to understand and analyse trust we should approach the phenomenon ex negativo, by interpreting experiences of violence and trauma. Basic trust, as structures of meaning constituting the phenomenon, are not visible to us. Trust must be shattered before it can be visible. From Endress and Pabst’s differentiation of trust, we may ask which trust we speak of when we discuss trust strategies of organizations and management, for example. Our language is the language of reflected trust.

Basic (operating) trust can only be researched through the examination of the forms of harm because a ‘positive’ finding of trust always refers to its reflexive or habitual forms, meaning precisely not the genuine quality of the phenomenon in question. (Endress and Pabst 2013: 90)

To understand the otherness of trust we might look at experiences of shattered trust. Waldenfels (1990: 118, in Endress and Pabst 2013: 94) says: “the core of violence is to disregard the otherness of the other and to refuse to let them bring forward their otherness”. Trust as the negation of violence is other or otherness, and opens the possibility of meeting the other in his/her otherness. Endress and Pabst’s sociological phenomenology of trust can help us focus the experiential qualities of trust, at least the seemingly invisible, basic trust, which is only possible to discern in its’ negation as statements of violence. But experiential trust may also be visible as ambiguous, though intense experiences, communicated in vocative writing (e.g., Zaner 2000). Van Manen (2014) shows how the understanding of skills of writing and text might make it possible to communicate the intensity as well as the ambiguous experiences of being human, and of the variety of human and universal phenomena. Combining Endress and Pabst’s basic trust and the vocative writing of van Manen, might help forth the study of and the communication about the lived experience of trust in organizational contexts.

Brown (2009) looks at the trust that a patient shows and develops in relation to the physician. The patient’s willingness to trust, and his/her reflected and motivated act of trust are at the core of trust, as Brown sees it. The play of intended interaction of familiar roles and motifs establishes and changes knowledge and trust in the actual encounter of patient and physician. Trust depends on mutual utterances and communication in the process of interaction. Trust builds on former experiences, Brown (2009) says, but the parties’ familiarity is risky and based on a belief in the other’s good intentions. Trust as reflected intention directed at the other has one’s own interest in mind. The double quality of other-directed trust that is oriented to our own interest and person is a “willed” trust. The orientation to the otherness of the other includes calculation, as its perspective is the interest and need of the subject. Endress and Pabst’s idea of reflected trust is a willed and calculated trust that likely is meaningful in theoretical discussions of trust, and perhaps less in real experiential situations.

Hilliard and O’Neill (2010) present the concept of “emotional labour” to point to the nurses’ strategy of controlling their appearance in front of the patient, in their case the child. Trust as outcome is possible if the nurse is able to control and achieve a specific appearance in front of other. Trust is the emotional work to control facial and bodily behavior, and although not entirely rational, the reflected qualities are apparent. Brown et al.’s (2011) idea of trust as the result of self-presentation and bodily aspects like touch as part of medical treatment, points to the appearance of the other as the important factor for a person to trust this other. While Brown et al. (2011) reduce embodied trust to self-presentation and awareness of communicative bodily potential, Lee-Treweek (2002) stresses the importance of the trustor’s active, interpretive work of trust, or the trusting effort. But trust is not only a result of the other’s trustworthiness. Goldberg (2008) on the other hand, focuses on the bodily appearances of trust. Trust and self is connected in and through the bodily experience. She directs our attention to basic trust (Endress and Pabst 2013), and contributes to their research an experiential layer of the bodily aspects of trust.

Experiential Trust in Work Life Organizations: Towards a Methodological Approach

An experiential understanding and approach implies looking for the lived experiences of trust, e.g., how trust is sensed in relational contexts. To a certain degree, Endress and Pabst’s (2013) trust typology might help us understand the experiential qualities, especially with regard to basic trust. But we need an approach as well that helps us to discern trust as a lived experience in other ways than through its’ negations. Zaner’s study (2000) shows us how a vocative writing style might be a possible way to phenomenological insights into trust. Still, some basic aspects of phenomenological trust are required in the attempt to outline a possible methodological approach: first, trust as a human experience can be a matter of the right moment (e.g., Hilliard and O’Neill 2010). Their study shows the need to dig into the singular moment when trust emerges, rather than to observe a gradual development of trust. The right moment might give insight into trust as experience. Nevertheless, every moment takes place in a context, and the demand for professional efficiency might make it hard for a nurse to be mentally present in the actual moment. We see how organizational trust is a question of intertwinement of structural possibilities and experiential trust, as shown in Zaner’s study (2000).

Zaner’s “dialogue” (2000) might also represent a possible way to understand and analyze trust in organizational encounters. The dialogue is not a conversation as such, but a kind of experiential search for meaning and significance. The response is not only a simple response to the subject’s need to know, but emphasizes the responsibility for the response, and as such the responsibility for the other. Responsibility and care is played out and made meaningful and visible in the dialogue between the patient and the professional. The dialogue displays our humanness as well as acknowledging the humanness of the other, and such it connects us in a joint moral understanding. The questioning and telling of the dialogue is the space of humanness and trust. The passion of the questioning and the need to know is part of being human, and for the patient the dialogue is about his or her life and death. Of course, all encounters and dialogues between human beings in some way or the other belong to the world of existence and responsibility for others—and the passion in questioning may be part of all dialogues, also in other organizational encounters. A pertinent question then might be where trust actually resides? Where is trust to be found (Saevi and Eikeland 2012)? Does trust reside in you or in me, or does it belong to the relation between us? Is trust inherent in relationships or is it given to us from outside when the need for trust is present?

Besides the question of where trust resides the structural challenge of the organization is the asymmetry of leader and employee—or in the case of health institutions, of patient and professional. How does this asymmetry affect the experience of trust? What is the experience of asymmetry? Following the example of Zaner we see how also asymmetry of power may be experiences of vulnerability and strength at the same time—and the vulnerable may also be potent and powerful. Experiential knowledge is ambiguous and compelling—and we need specific methodological techniques in vocative writing to try to communicate how trust and asymmetry is experienced as well as explore the question of where trust “is” when it is “not in action”.

Concluding Remarks

In an experiential and phenomenological approach to trust, the ambiguous, risky and uncontrollable qualities are highlighted. Trust as part of our relational existence as human beings might resemble what Endress and Pabst (2013) call basic trust—a kind of pre-thematic trust that belongs to our world of existential relational being. In a phenomenological interpretation, a pre-thematic trust resembles experiential trust, none of which can be theoretically explored. This is only partly true however, as philosophers and phenomenologists have explored trust, although without the intention to capture it within theoretical boundaries. Lögstrup for instance, considers trust a sovereign life expression (2008), a manifestation of human relationality that is beyond use or control. In work life contexts with strong structures of roles, tasks and authority, a relevant question from a phenomenological perspective would be what would happen if the experience of trust meets rational structures and pre-constructed roles, tasks and systems? Can trust be seen as a life expression beyond calculation, pre-planning and control? Is there room for experiences of trust in organizational situations, encounters and projects?

Some of the publications reviewed in this study include aspects or traces of experiential uncontrollable and risky trust, not unlike Lögstrup’s sovereign life expression. An example is Friend et al.’s (2010) focus on customers’ experience of humiliation and distrust, a focus with experiential potential. Hilliard and O’Neill (2010) point to the fragility of trust within the dilemma of conflicting interests of efficiency and support for children and parents. They worry that they might have “missed the moment” of trust. In the expression of “missing the moment,” trust is seen as something emergent, something that might be there or not, and indicates the question of where trust actually “is” before and after “the moments”. Trust here is not a constructive, relational quality that develops gradually. To miss the moment means to miss the possibility of trust.

A third example is Lindgren and Graneheim (2015) whose genuine meeting is decisive for trust to emerge. Based on the philosophical texts of Martin Buber they understand trust as dependent on the persons taking part in this genuine encounter. The role as patient or professional is not sufficient. Rather a personal, genuine, honest understanding, and the experience of being acknowledged and seen as just this special, unique person, is significant.

While Hilliard and O’Neill (2010) and other phenomenological studies of patient-nurse relationships (e.g., Holmberg 2014, and partly also Lindgren and Graneheim 2015), understand trust as a process that moves with the relationship, trust related to “the moment” seems to present itself as an instant experience including contradictory feelings as satisfaction and joy, helplessness, frustration and guilt. “Moments of trust” as contrary to processes of trust development, offer space for uncertainty and risk, and put at stake existential dilemmas related to dependency, power, vulnerability and goodness. The experiential facets of exposure, attraction, intensity, and compelling and commanding acts, are described in the mere act of trusting, in the actual meeting with the other. In a possible methodological approach to studies of experiential trust we might look at how these experiences and qualities of the moment of trust are embedded in the structural contexts of the organization. The embeddedness of trust does not define trust or decide the meaning of the experience. But how trust is embedded, is part of the experience, and the embeddedness adds further ambiguity and ambivalence to the experience. Moreover, the structural qualities of the moment partly frames the possibility of trust to emerge and withdraw.

Zaner (2000) as the last example, points to the experience that his patients’ trust in the physician is as much the trust from the patient’s family. The patient as well as his/her family has no real knowledge or experience that should secure their trust in him. This is somehow also the situation in organizational work life contexts. There is, however, a prohibitively hindrance of the possibility of communicating trust, which in itself is sovereign and not possible for us to capture or control. Organizational structures as well as typical organizational dilemmas, like demands of efficiency and deadlines, can be hindrances when it comes to the emergence of trust. Grundy (2014) points to how trust emerges in an ethical and political space of complex ethical choices and dilemmas in between different interests, actors and values. The “in between” as Grundy puts it (2014), is a place where the nurse balances different interests, actors and values, and still performs ethical action. The ethics of trust is formed by the ethics of care and the ethics of justice. Trust might be seen as an ethical act in itself, while emerging “in between” other kinds of ethics. Perhaps the “in-betweens” are what we should be aware of in work life—the moments when things do not fit or give perfect sense. In these spaces, at these spots, there might be room for the ambiguities and experiential qualities of trust. The “in between” might be the place for both dialogue (Zaner 2000), asymmetry and structural challenges, and experiential trust may become visible in these “right” moments. Trust in a particular other person as well as in the emergence of fairness and justice. e.g., trust that relates to more than one other, according to Levinas is a possibility (Levinas 2007). The experience of trust in cracks, fissures and “in-betweens” might emerge also in complex relational, organizational settings.