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Trust and Distrust in Organizations: Dilemmas and Approaches, edited by Roderick M. Kramer and Karen S. Cook. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 2004. 368 pp. $39.95 cloth. ISBN: 0-87154-485-7.
In addition to the editors' Introduction, this volume consists of thirteen chapters exploring the complexities and subtleties of trust-related phenomena in different contemporary organizational settings. The papers are divided into three main sections: "Trust and Hierarchy," "Trust and Distrust in Teams and Networks," and "Challenges to Securing and Sustaining Trust." Individual contributions address specific topics such as: trust in leaders, the relationship between power and trust, trust within public bureaucracies, trust online, managing images of trustworthiness within organizations, and trust and learning in organizations.
Bringing together scholars from an array of social science disciplines-including social psychology, sociology, political science, and economics-the collection of papers is naturally very diverse, both in terms of theory and methodology. Even so, the individual essays do not lack cohesion, but hang together within the common approach outlined by the editors in the introductory chapter-which is more or less manifest in every contribution. Framing the volume paradigmatically, the editors link it to Hardin's (2002) notion of trust as a three-part relation defined not...