Review of Interorganizational Trust Models

摘要

The Canadian government has sought a coherent strategy and policy for missions that rely on the integration and coordination of multiple government agencies so that national goals in international operations can be effectively achieved. Likewise, the recent Canadian Forces (CF) Joint Doctrine Manual (2009) explicitly called for a whole-government approach to operations. To this end, DRDC Toronto has recently begun an Applied Research Program (ARP) exploring the psychological dynamics of trust in the interagency domain, with the intent to develop a conceptual model. This report is in support of these efforts. This report reviewed current interorganizational trust models, in particular those that would be relevant in a Joint, Interagency, Multinational, and Public (JIMP) context. Effort was made to find articles which were relevant to the Canadian military context; however, these articles were scarce, with most research performed in a business context. Approximately 30 primary articles identified in the search were selected and reviewed in detail. Challenges uncovered in this review included a lack of relevant research and models related to interorganizational trust, lack of empirical testing of models and the varying quality of the research that could be retrieved. Emerging themes including the importance of the level of analysis, the components, process and antecedents are discussed. The relationship between trust and performance, and the growing attention to trust violations and repair as well as measures of interorganizational trust are also explored.