Genuine, non-calculative trust with calculative antecedents: Reconsidering Williamson on trust

Abstract

This short paper defends Oliver Williamson's claim that talk of trust is ‘redundant at best and can be misleading’ when trust is defined as a form of calculated risk (Williamson, O. E. [1993]. Calculativeness, trust, and economic organization. The Journal of Law and Economics, 36, 453–486). And this paper accepts Williamson's claim that ‘Calculative trust is a contradiction in terms’. But the present paper defends a conception of genuine, non-calculative trust that is compatible with calculative considerations and calculative antecedents. This conception of trust creates space for genuine (non-calculative) trust relationships in the economic order – in which calculative considerations and antecedents (most often) play an essential role.

Keywords:

• trust conceptualisations
• antecedents
• calculative/economic relationships

Acknowledgements

The author thanks John W. Dienhart, Jeffrey Helmreich, Colette Hoption, Brian Kelly, Guido Möllering, Dean Peterson and two anonymous reviewers for encouragement and for helpful suggestions.

Notes on contributor

Marc A. Cohen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Management and the Department of Philosophy at Seattle University. His research concerns social contract theory; emotions, decision-making and rational agency in moral psychology; business ethics; and more general questions in moral/political philosophy about what makes society more than an accidental crowd. Prior to joining Seattle University Dr Cohen worked in the commercial banking industry and as a management consultant.

Notes

1. Cohen and Dienhart (2013) define trust in terms of invitations:

when A trusts B to do X, A invites B to acknowledge and accept an obligation to do X. When – or if – B accepts the invitation, B takes on that obligation. In that way trust creates an obligation and forms a trust relationship. (p. 4)

Trust-invitations and trust-acceptance can create new obligations in a pre-existing relationship, in the process deepening/transforming the existing relationship. Trust-acceptance can also create obligations when there is no pre-existing relationship. Across both contexts, according to that paper, ‘we can think of trust-invitations as seeking out a moral relationship’ (p. 4). This definition of trust emphasises the process, and we might describe the trust-invitation as going in the opposite direction, with B inviting A to rely on him or her. The definition proposed here is consistent with the one offered in Cohen and Dienhart, but it emphasises the structure of the trust relationship – the commitment and obligation binding the parties – rather than the process of forming a trust relationship.