Multilevel trust: A theoretical and practical imperative

Levels of analysis has long been identified as a key feature of trust (Rousseau, Sitkin, Burt, & Camerer, 1998; Schoorman, Mayer, & Davis, 2007). Trust, as a product and driver of a relationship, by definition involves two or more parties (Ferris et al., 2009). Each party’s trust in another is subject to a host of influences across levels of analysis, ranging from dispositions at the individual level and history at the relationship level to norms at the network level and values at the institutional and societal levels, to name a few. The multilevel complexities only increase when we consider trust beyond interpersonal contexts, such as within a team, between different teams, within an organisation, and between different organisations. Despite this inherently multilevel nature, research on trust incorporating multiple levels of analysis remains limited, while research on trust at different levels of analysis, such as trust in teams and organisations, continues to develop independently with little cross-fertilisation (Fulmer & Gelfand, 2012). This isolation of trust at a single level of analysis ignoring processes and factors from other levels creates non-trivial gaps in our understanding of trust. As a few recent papers show, without a multilevel perspective, we cannot examine critical trust dynamics such as differences in trust within teams and the relationship between interpersonal trust and interorganisational trust. For instance, in a study of teams, De Jong and Dirks (2012) demonstrated how the effect of intra-team trust on team performance is contingent upon the asymmetry in trust between individual dyads. In a study of interorganisational relationships, Vanneste (2016) showed that indirect reciprocity between boundary spanners, where they give to those who give to others, facilitates interorganisational trust between groups of individuals. In addition to this theoretical imperative, from a practical point of view, a multilevel perspective is necessary to appreciate the role of trust in our changing environment. Individuals and institutions are frequently forced to respond to changes driven by factors at multiple levels. For example, trust in institutions has become more challenging as technology and social media change how people come together and share information. Individuals now have opportunities to engage in both formal and informal relationships through social media, and these relationships can change interpretations of the information from institutions as it shapes the trust that develops. Moreover, individuals and organisations face greater competition, and more rapid change in response to competition, which make trust more difficult to establish and maintain. The need to understand how trust functions in these multilevel frameworks continues to grow as trust holds promise to bridge differences across boundaries and through challenges.