| authors | Barrera, D.; Buskens, V.W. |
| source | International Sociology, Volume: 22, Issue: 3 (2007), pp. 367-396 |
| full text | The full text of this item is not available due to the copyrights policy of the publisher.
|
| publisher | SAGE |
| URL publisher | [Website publisher]
|
| document type | Article |
| version | Publisher version |
| disciplines | Sociologie |
| abstract | Trust is important in organizations, e.g. in teams or small working groups
in which the performance of team members depends on the performance of other
members in the group and in which team members have only an incentive to perform
well if they trust that others perform as well. Existing theories regarding
effects of communication on trust problems stress the influence of information
about behaviour of potential partners. Effects of imitation are less extensively elaborated
in the literature. In this article, the authors develop a theory about imitation
in combination with other network effects on trust. They propose a distinction
between imitation and other types of learning, contrasting trustors who only know
that other trustors have been trustful in transactions with a trustee with trustors
who also know that this trustee was in fact trustworthy. The theory predicts that
both imitation and learning have an effect in trust situations and that these effects
depend on uncertainties for the trustor. The authors designed a vignette experiment
that enables the distinction between imitation and learning for different levels
of uncertainty. The experiment provides strong support for learning effects on
trust and some support for imitation effects. There is only limited evidence that the
imitation effects depend on uncertainty. |
| keywords | control, imitation, learning, social networks, trust |
| ISSN | 0268-5809 |
