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This paper analyzes trust and power as means of co-ordinating trans-organizational relationships. It is argued that, depending on the institutional environment, there are two distinct patterns of controlling relationships, where trust and power are interrelated in quite different ways. First, both mechanisms are generated at the inter-personal level and either trust or power dominates the relationship. Second, power occurs at the level of the structural framework of relationships and is highly conducive to developing trust between individual organizations. Thus, specific forms of trust and power are identified and the institutional environment is viewed as playing a crucial role in shaping the quality of trans-organizational relations. The theoretical background of the paper mainly draws on conceptual ideas of Systems Theory, Structuration Theory and New Institutionalism

Der Beitrag setzt sich mit dem in der Netzwerkforschung bislang weitgehend unberücksichtigt gebliebenen Verhältnis von Vertrauen und Macht auseinander. Auf der Grundlage system- und strukturationstheoretischer Überlegungen wird die Funktionsweise von Vertrauen in Netzwerken erläutert und herausgestellt, dass Vertrauen und Macht sich in ihrer Funktion als Handlungskoordinationsmechanismen substituieren können. Der Autor plädiert dafür, das Zusammenspiel von Vertrauen und Macht - sowie eine auf diesem Verständnis aufsetzende (reflexivere) Netzwerksteuerung - genauer zu analysieren und hierbei systematisch eine individuelle von einer institutionellen Ebene von Vertrauen und Macht zu unterscheiden. Der Autor versucht, beide Ansätze - die Forschungsperspektive der Netzwerkforschung und die soziologische Rekonstruktion von Vertrauen und Macht als grundlegende Mechanismen der Koordination und der Steuerung des neuen Typs interorganisationaler Beziehungen - so zusammenzuführen, dass damit eine fruchtbare und den Realentwicklungen angemessene begriffliche Synthese entsteht. (ICA2)

The Handbook of Advances in Trust Research presents new and important developments in trust research. The contributors are all prominent and highly respected experts in the field. Firstly, they provide a contemporary overview of the most crucial issues in current trust research including contracts, innovation and negotiation, trust and control. Thereafter, themes which have gained prominence since the original Handbook are considered, such as trust and the financial crisis, public trust in business, and trust and HRM. The book also explores recent theoretical advances and points the way for future research on trust.

Research on trust has become a major field in the domain of management and in the social sciences as a whole. This handbook presents a comprehensive account of the most important work undertaken in this field. It features 22 articles from a variety of disciplines on the study of trust in both organizational and societal contexts

This article suggests conceptualising trust as a generalised symbolic medium of communication. It is argued that in business relationships trust appears intertwined with other media, such as power or money. Furthermore, it is shown that typical combinations of trust, power and money are dominant in different business systems (liberal vs coordinated market economies). The overarching aim of this article is to demonstrate that trust is a fundamental concept of social theory and that the theory of generalised symbolic media of communication provides a useful conceptual perspective to integrate trust into social theory.

Trust is analysed as a means to reduce uncertainty and risk in vertical inter-firm relationships. Both theoretically and with reference to empirical comparative research (Britain and Germany), it is shown that trust-based relations between buyer and supplier firms rarely evolve spontaneously on the level of individual interaction but are highly dependent on the existence of stable legal, political and social institutions.