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Arguably, the most critical time frame for organizational participants to develop trust is at the beginning of their relationship. Using primarily a cognitive approach, we address factors and processes that enable two organizational parties to form relatively high trust initially. We propose a model of specific relationships among several trust-related constructs and two cognitive processes. The model helps explain the paradoxical finding of high initial trust levels in new organizational relationships.
Several trust theorists have stated that trust develops gradually over time (e.g., Blau, 1964; Rempel, Holmes, & Zanna, 1985; Zand, 1972), but when contrasted with some recent empirical findings, their theories present an interesting paradox. By positing that trust grows over time, these trust theorists implicitly assume that trust levels start small and gradually increase. Some researchers, then, expecting this, have been surprised at how high their subjects' early trust levels were-both in survey and experimental studies (e.g., Berg, Dickhaut, & McCabe, 1995; Kramer, 1994). For example, economics-based researchers Berg et al. (1995) expected subjects to exhibit low to medium trust in each other when faced with a trust dilemma. Instead, their subjects frequently exhibited high trust-passing to a second subject dollars they were given during the first part of the experiment, without any reason to expect their generosity to be reciprocated. Another example is Kramer's (1994) survey of MBAs who were previously unknown to each other. Because the MBAs had no interaction history, one would have expected them to have low trust levels; however, surprisingly, Kramer found high trust levels among these individuals.
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
The Paradox of High Initial Trust Levels
High initial trust findings are paradoxical because, as we stated above, several trust theorists predict low initial trust. By "initial" we mean when parties first meet or interact. An example of initial trust predictions is provided by economics- or calculative-based trust researchers (e.g., Coleman, 1990; Williamson, 1993), who theorize that individuals make trust choices based on rationally derived costs and benefits (Lewicki & Bunker, 1995; Shapiro, Sheppard, & Cheraskin, 1992). Thus, calculativebased trust theorists would predict that the lack of incentives (benefits) of Berg et al.'s subjects would result in low levels of trusting behavior among them. However, Berg et al.'s results do not agree with this prediction. As another...