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Theories of trust imply that team trust develops and grows over time, yet relatively few researchers have taken on the challenge of studying team trust in longitudinal research designs. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a concise summary of the existing literature on team trust over time, and to offer a conceptual model of team-level trust development over time to aid future research on this topic.

We draw from the Input–Mediator–Output–Input (IMOI) framework, as well as previous multilevel models of organizational trust development, and published findings from longitudinal team trust studies.

Taking a temporal perspective, we consider how team-level mediators and outcomes can both predict and be predicted by team trust trajectories and feedback loops over time, as well as how those relationships with team trust might change based on the existence of other moderating variables including trust violation and repair.

Future longitudinal team research may use the model as a starting point for investigating the antecedents, as well as the team processes and dynamic emergent states, that can effectively predict trajectories of team trust across various stages of teamwork.

Based on our review of extant literature, we provide several recommendations for training and organizational intervention including the importance of management’s consideration of team-level trust in providing feedback, enhancing cohesion, and mitigating conflict.

We provide insight into the development of team trust trajectories and offer a framework to help guide future longitudinal team trust research.

Purpose – Trust and justice are generally considered distinct but closely related constructs. Individual perceptions of procedural justice and trustworthiness have been shown to reciprocally influence one another, each independently promoting trust (Colquitt & Mueller, 2007). We consider instances where these may instead diverge: how intentional efforts to build trust may unintentionally erode justice, and how the use of fair procedures may reduce trust.

Approach – We argue that the anomalous divergences between trust and justice are evident only when simultaneously considering judgments at two levels: the interpersonal level (i.e., within dyads inside the team) and the team level (i.e., shared perceptions of all team members).

Implications for research and practice – The unintended effects described in this chapter describe a “dark side” to a number of taken-for-granted practices in organizational life (favor-paying, punishment processes, and approaches to redress). We expect that this chapter should promote new research using the team context to bridge the trust and justice literatures, and provoke a careful reconsideration among practitioners of these approaches.

Originality – We propose three previously overlooked disjunctures between trust and justice. First, we show how procedurally unfair approaches to allocating favors may be beneficial in building dyadic trust between team members. Next, we describe how fair (open and transparent) group processes for punishing perpetrators may erode trust by skewing group members’ perceptions of the prevalence of trust violations. Finally, we describe how the most effective forms of redress at the interpersonal level may provoke perceptions of injustice at the team level.

It is well known that trust is an essential, yet a fragile part of organizational life. Because trust sometimes has to be placed without guarantees, it will inevitably be broken, violated, and damaged when parties involved in trustworthy relationships let others down. When trust-destroying events occur, trust is shattered and its level plummets quickly into the domain of distrust. The speed with which trust can be destroyed depends on the magnitude of damage from the act of untrustworthiness and the perceived intentionality of the untrustworthiness. Moreover, if seen as intentional, the destruction of trust is particularly severe, as intentional untrustworthiness reveals malevolent intentions that are seen as highly predictive of future untrustworthiness. Often, leaders are the ones responsible for improper handling of, destroying, or violating trust in their organizations. In this chapter, we explore the consequences of leaders for violating trust and examine how trust changes over time as a function of different types of violations and attempts at restoration. We argue that because distrust may irrevocably harm organizations, leaders as moral agents need to consciously work to rebuild relationships, restore broken trust, and instill hope.

Interactions between customers and service providers are ubiquitous. Some of these encounters are routine, but many are characterized by conflict and intense emotions. This chapter introduces a new theory, service encounter needs theory (SENT) that aims to elucidate the mechanisms through which service encounter behaviors affect outcomes for customers and employees. Evidence is presented for the preeminence within these encounters of eight psychosocial needs, and propositions are advanced regarding likely antecedents to fulfillment and violation of these needs. Emotional experiences and displays are viewed as important consequences of need fulfillment and violation, as are numerous cognitive, behavioral, and health-related outcomes.

For organizations to be effective, their employees need to rely upon each other even when they do not trust each other. One tool managers can use to promote trust-like behavior is monitoring. In this chapter, we report results from a laboratory study that describes the relationship between monitoring and trust behavior. We randomly and anonymously paired participants (n=210) with the same partner, and had them make 15 rounds of trust game decisions. We find predictable main effects (e.g. frequent monitoring increases trust behavior) as well as interesting strategic behavior. Specifically, we find that anticipated monitoring schemes (i.e. when participants know before they make a decision that they either will or will not be monitored) significantly increase trust behavior in monitored rounds, but decrease trust behavior overall. Participants in our study also reacted to information they learned about their counterpart differently as a function of whether or not monitoring was anticipated. Participants were less trusting when they observed trustworthy behavior in an anticipated monitoring period, than when they observed trustworthy behavior in an unanticipated monitoring period. In many cases, participants in our study systematically anticipated their counterpart's untrustworthy behavior. We discuss implication of these results for models of trust and offer managerial prescriptions.

Purpose – To motivate efforts within the ethics, fairness, and justice literatures to address some largely unexamined questions regarding how reactions to potential transgressions might depend on the group context.

Design/approach – We draw on prior literature on ethics, fairness, and justice to develop a framework that highlights gaps in the literature. We develop a section on future work that provides suggestions to researchers on how to address these gaps.

Findings – Although it is important to understand how to prevent transgressions from being committed, we start from the point of view that they are likely to remain an unfortunate aspect of organizational life. Thus, it is important to consider how people not only interpret transgressions, but also how they might respond after such transgressions occur. Through a review of the prior literature, we highlight the relative lack of research on such responses, particularly at a collective level, by considering (1) the types and implications of attributions made for transgressions in a group context and (2) how collective reactions to potential transgressions may ultimately differ from those of individuals.

Originality/value – We attempt to spur greater understanding of how groups understand and collectively react to potential transgressions. By doing so, we motivate greater attention toward an important, though underexplored, area in the literature.

Negotiation is a ubiquitous part of work-life. As such, negotiations do not occur in a vacuum, which means that we often find ourselves negotiating again and again, in a variety of situations, with varying degrees of success and failure. By taking every opportunity that presents itself, we can learn and develop our negotiation skills further as a result of our cumulative negotiation experiences – especially the more difficult ones. To date, the literature on negotiation and learning from failures has yet to be integrated. In pursuit of this goal, this chapter will firstly, identify the characteristics or specific aspects of a negotiation that could be a setback or failure, and secondly, integrate failures and setbacks into a systematic approach in which we can learn effectively from these setbacks, in which the author applies the literature on learning from failure to specific negotiation setbacks.

This chapter examines three kinds of relational bonds (trust-based commitments, forbearance-based commitments, and apprehension-based commitments) on which parties rely in the processes employed in negotiating, committing, and executing their cooperative inter-organizational relationships (CIORs). It also considers three different societal contexts with strong, moderately strong, and weak exogenous governance safeguards in which these relational bonds are employed. The authors propose a process theory of relational bonds that fit different contexts. Specifically, our central proposition is that parties to CIORs are more likely to achieve their goals when they rely on relational bonds that fit their societal contexts in which they engage in economic exchanges.