The Routledge Companion to Trust

15An Interactive Perspective on Trust Repair

Peter H. Kim

Introduction

Although trust has been widely recognized to be critical for many aspects of organizational life, it is also clear that trust can quite often be violated. Scholars have observed that a range of questionable practices has resulted in significant declines in organizational trustworthiness in the eyes of their employees and members of other organizations (Tyler & Kramer, 1996). The popular press has likewise raised concerns about how ‘a seemingly endless stream of bad news alleging widespread management negligence and malfeasance has been chipping away at the trust vital to a free-market system’ (Byrne, 2002). And these observations have been underscored by a recent survey by ...