A Critique of Utilitarian Trust: The Case of the Dutch Insurance Sector

Abstract The organizational trust literature relies strongly on the notion of trust and trustworthiness as a calculative cause-and-effect relationship aimed at assessing the advantages and disadvantages between two actors. This utilitarian notion of trust has been critiqued by studies that highlight construct inconsistencies related to utilitarian trust, which, it is argued, is deficient, incomplete and misleading. Our empirical study of the Dutch insurance sector identifies and categorizes three process inconsistencies that help to explain why the calculation of trust in a utilitarian sense i... Mehr ...

Verfasser: van Rietschoten, Erik
van Bommel, Koen
Dokumenttyp: Artikel
Erscheinungsdatum: 2022
Reihe/Periodikum: Journal of Business Ethics ; volume 183, issue 4, page 1011-1028 ; ISSN 0167-4544 1573-0697
Verlag/Hrsg.: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Schlagwörter: Law / Economics and Econometrics / Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous) / General Business / Management and Accounting / Business and International Management
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-27069548
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
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Link(s) : http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10551-022-05040-1

Abstract The organizational trust literature relies strongly on the notion of trust and trustworthiness as a calculative cause-and-effect relationship aimed at assessing the advantages and disadvantages between two actors. This utilitarian notion of trust has been critiqued by studies that highlight construct inconsistencies related to utilitarian trust, which, it is argued, is deficient, incomplete and misleading. Our empirical study of the Dutch insurance sector identifies and categorizes three process inconsistencies that help to explain why the calculation of trust in a utilitarian sense is seemingly impossible in practice and is a barrier to the unambiguous assessment of individual needs and individual utility. These process inconsistencies successively concern insufficient information, complex behavioural dynamics, and a convoluted pattern of stakeholder influence to assess utility in trust relationships, specifically within complex socio-economic systems. Our findings contribute to the trust literature by proposing a classification of the previous critiques on utilitarian trust, and by showing that in scenarios of systematic rather than dyadic trust, process inconsistencies may be too strong to endure a ‘leap of faith’, at least with regard to suspension and assessing utilitarian trust in these more complex socio-economic systems.