Trust differences across national-societal cultures: Much to do, or much ado about nothing?

By Donald L. Ferrin, Nicole M. Gillespie. 2010

114 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Does trust and its development, functions and meaning, differ between people from different national–societal cultures? There is considerable anecdotal evidence and some theoretical argumentation to suggest it does, but are these supported by empirical research? This chapter reviews the available empirical evidence on the effects of national–societal culture on interpersonal trust. It focuses largely on quantitative empirical evidence to consider the extent to which, and the ways in which, interpersonal trust differs across national–societal cultures. In every category of our review we found evidence of cross-cultural differences, particularly on generalized trust, and also evidence of trust universals across cultures. In evaluating these findings, we conclude that trust may operate as a variform universal and variform functional universal. We conclude with two proposed routes for future research, and implications for practice. Introduction To an ever-increasing extent, ‘work’ involves close interaction and cooperation with people who come from a national–societal cultural background different from one's own. This emerging reality of work can be attributed to a number of factors. First, with the unrelenting advance of globalization, more and more organizations are taking a global approach to operations, including the operation of overseas international joint ventures and alliances, working with offshore suppliers and customers, and conducting global searches for talent. Second, the advance of communication technologies such as e-mail and videoconferencing has fostered a movement toward global virtual teams involving individuals from a variety of different cultural backgrounds.

Subfields: Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9ff969327392aa8f6cfa7787fc92ac5276d9511a

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Social Psychology

1. J. Love
2. G. Dietz
3. Friederike Welter
4. P. Ganotakis
5. M. Kafouros

In Sociology and Political Science

1. Friederike Welter
2. J. Love
3. G. Dietz
4. P. Ganotakis
5. M. Kafouros
6. Dietmar Grichnik
7. Florian Forster

Citations in the corpus

• Going back to the source: Why do people trust each other? (2011, background): “There is much evidence for this: Ferrin and Gillespie’s review (2010) of 56 studies”
• Experience in R&D collaborations, innovative performance and the moderating effect of different dimensions of absorptive capacity (2020, background): “However, trust in collaborations is perceived and is developed differently between cultures (Ferrin and Gillespie, 2010).”
• All you need is trust? A critical review of the trust and entrepreneurship literature (2012, background): “…although trust needs to be interpreted and viewed in its specific context, the notion of high-trust and low-trust country contexts is too simplistic, suggesting instead that levels of trust differ not only across countries, but also within regions and sectors (see also Ferrin and Gillespie, 2010).”