The Future of Organizational Trust Research: A Content-Analytic Synthesis of Scholarly Recommendations and Review of Recent Developments

Abstract

This chapter contributes to defining a common research agenda on organizational trust, first by content-analyzing scholarly recommendations for future research published between 2007 and 2011 across 347 articles and 58 social science journals, and second by reviewing the latest developments in trust research published between 2012 and 2015 across 111 articles and 31 top-tier management journals. Our content analysis of scholarly recommendations yields an emergent organizing framework that offers systematic insight into the trust community’s beliefs about how the field should move forward, while our review of the latest developments in the field provide insight into whether these recommendations have recently been followed up on, or whether research has developed in previously unanticipated directions. Our synthesis and review reveal a wealth of exciting research possibilities and offer a glimpse into the future of organizational trust research. We conclude with suggestions on how individual researchers and the trust community as a whole can use and build on our findings to help advance the field.

Keywords: trust, organizations