Trust, calculativeness, and relationships: A special issue 20 years after Williamson's warning

Abstract

This article addresses the relationship between trust and calculativeness. It summarises the arguments put forward by Oliver Williamson in 1993 (Williamson, O. E. [1993]. Calculativeness, trust, and economic organization. The Journal of Law and Economics, 36, 453–486) and the debate that followed in the two decades afterwards. This includes a citation analysis of 432 articles from Web of Science indices. The article then introduces and discusses the five contributions to the Journal of Trust Research Special Issue on this topic. Overall, the debate points to pivotal issues for the conceptualization and empirical study of trust, especially the experience of Knightian uncertainty and the variety of bases for human relationships and interactions.

Keywords:

• trust
• calculation
• uncertainty
• relationships
• Oliver E. Williamson

Acknowledgements

I am deeply grateful to Carolin Baur, PhD Fellow in the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences (BIGSSS) at Jacobs University Bremen and the University of Bremen, Germany, for collaborating with me on the citation analysis and taking on the bulk of the work of setting up the article database and managing the coding process. The project was supported financially by Jacobs University Bremen. Søren Jagd of Roskilde University, Denmark, gave me a number of very useful pointers, especially regarding Lucien Karpik's work. I also thank JTR Editor-in-Chief Peter Ping Li and JTR Deputy Editor-in-Chief Don Ferrin for supporting this Special Issue and for very quick and helpful feedback on an earlier draft of this article. Last but not least, I am indebted to the contributors, reviewers and the JTR Managing Editor Janette Rawlings. This Special Issue would not have been possible without their effort, patience and dedication.

Note on Contributor

Guido Möllering is Associate Professor of Organization and Management and holds the EWE Chair of Economic Organization and Trust at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Jacobs University Bremen, Germany. He earned his PhD in Management at the University of Cambridge, UK, and his habilitation (postdoctoral degree, venia legendi) in Business Administration at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. His main areas of research are inter-organizational relationships, organizational fields and trust. Professor Möllering published several books and many articles in leading journals such as Organization Science and Journal of International Business Studies. He is a Senior Editor of Organization Studies, and a Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Trust Research.