May@Tower B

Mayer, R.C., Davis, J.H., & Schoorman, F.D. 1995. An integrative model of organizational trust. Academy of Management Journal, 20: 709-734.

Definition of trust: the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party.

The author propose that perceived trustworthiness is composed of ability, benevolent and integrity. The trustworthiness is moderated by trustor’s propensity to trust, and then lead to the trust (willingness to be vulnerable), then lead to the risk taking behavior. –I think these three components are in the cognitive, affective, and normative categories.

An interesting time effect the author proposed is, “the effect of integrity on trust will be most salient early in the relationship prior to the development of meaningful benevolence data.” “The effect of the perceived benevolence on trust will increase over time as the relationship between the parties develops.” –I thought this time effect is also related to the Kim’s forgiveness searching, (whether the wrong thing is because of ability or integrity.) How trust is broken can be studied by experiments, remember there are such studies done by Wharton professors, and saved at my delicious account. So, in a relation building process, what’s the role of affect and cognition of ability? Do we build the relationship on affect first or on ability first?

McAllister, D. J. 1995. Affect- and cognitional-based trust as foundations for interpersonal cooperation in organizations.

Academy of
Management Journal, 38: 24-59. 

Differentiation of affective and cognitive trust is reasonable. However, I am not satisfied with the antecedents of cognitive and affective trust. The author argued that OCB and interaction frequency is the antecedents of affective trust. à I’d like to view OCB as the cognition based trust, (in a exchange relationship, the inequity status may enhance the period of relationship!! ) For the interaction frequency, I think people are more likely to take the frequency as a heuristic to judge the trust.

For the cognition-based trust, the author proposed peer reliable role performance, culture-ethnic similarity, and professional credentials as antecedents, –I just feel these variables are not at the same level.

The distinct consequences of cognitive and affective trust are interesting. The proposition is that affective trust will lead to need-based monitoring and cognitive trust will lead to control based monitoring. –However, I think it’s not the differential effect of cognition based trust and affect based trust, but whether there is trust or not. No trust, then control based monitoring, trust, then need based monitoring. For the author’s proposition, there must be an assumption, that is, people can feel the different level of cognitive trust and affective trust. –Is that possible?

Some useful reference:

Clark, M.S., Mills, J., & Corcoran, D.M. 1989. Keeping track of need and inputs of friends and strangers. Personality and social psychology bulletin, 15:533-542.

Fichman, M., & Levinthal, D.A. 1991. Honeymoons and the liability of adolescence: A new perspective on duration dependence in the social and organizational relationships.

Academy of
Management Review, 16: 442-468.

Larson, A. 1992. Network dyads in entrepreneurial settings: a study of governance of exchange relationships. Administrative Science Quarterly, 37: 76-104.