One should also consider how useful the practice approach is to our understanding of trust. Quoting from Möllering (2001: 343), I mention earlier in this thesis that ‘it should be interesting to analyse how the new framing challenges or confirms previous findings’. How can we claim that this perspective is any more than an interesting academic exercise? What does this practice approach to trust building contribute that is different to our current understanding?
First, the practice approach allows us to consider the everyday as significant in the trust building process. We see in this study how the most mundane discussions about cycling, or crèches for example, provide opportunities for trust-building. This is a significant move away from our current approach to trust research, which looks beyond the everyday in search of grand theories to explain how trust will work in given situations.
This leads us to the second significant aspect of the practice approach: trust from a practice perspective embraces the complexity of social life. Stories for example become important because of their meaning, their histories, who is telling the story, indeed, even where the story is told all become highly relevant in the trust building approach. Therefore, we cannot distinguish a story from its context – but rather we ought to explain the significance of the story in ways that allow thick description and help to understand the ways that a practice such as storytelling might be used to advance trust (or in some cases perhaps contribute to a breakdown in trust). Therefore, the practice approach allows us to “dig a little deeper” in search of the idiosyncrasies that are contributing to the trust-building process.
The practices that were observed provide an initial starting point to consider trust from a practice perspective. There will be other practices that one might identify in other studies of trust. However, the three practices observed represent three prominent ways that trust was built amongst the group and, broadly represent calculative, cognitive and normative aspects of trust that are often referred to in the
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trust literature (broadly described as calculative, knowledge and identification based trust – see Mayer et al., 1995 and Lewicki et al., 2006 for instance).
Storytelling appeared to be one practice that allowed participants to align their values and, in doing so, it appeared that this practice served to build identification- based types of trust. There are two aspects of this discovery that are of practical use to the trust researcher. First, storytelling is something tangible the researcher can observe. Often, studies of trust speak in largely hypothetical language about identification-based trust. Identification-based trust is diffuse and difficult to identify because it exists in the idiosyncrasies of the relationship between the trustee and the trustor. Second, storytelling as a practice has a rather lovely social depth to it. We are challenged to ask why the storyteller has told a story in such a way and what their context is – the very act of identifying the story requires us to engage with the wider context. In this sense we all tell each other stories all the time – stories are meaning- making, they are relational and they are practices that bring together trustee and trustor in a spirit of alignment where they can find mutual agreement even if their worlds are far apart. In this sense, we might consider storytelling to be a bridging practice that brings together trustee and trustor in a mutual alignment of values.
Curating spaces presents a second practice that allows us to think about trust in ways that really are quite new to trust research. Hitherto, trust research has largely ignored the role of space in the trust-building process. Space has largely been considered a background context – a landscape in which the trust building takes place – rather than any kind of significant part of the trust building process. This study has identified both the importance of space to the trust building process, but also that the individuals and the space interact in ways that matter to the trust building process. This is not a new idea to practice theory, but it is a very different way of thinking about trust research. The practice of curating space is integral to the trust building process but also the space itself curates the ways in which the individual actors behave.
The practice of managing and mediating knowledge also presents a new dimension to our understanding of trust. In trust research knowledge is something concrete that an individual gains about a situation or a potential trustee before they commit more fully to a trusting relationship. From this reified perspective, trust is something that exists in its own right. However, as we see in the discussion about the EU legislation for instance in this study, knowledge in the trust-building process is something that is created in the social. It is not something that is the property of or about an individual, but something that exists as a part of the process itself. Again,
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this is not a new idea to practice theory. Studies of knowledge and practice such as Brown & Duguid (2001) highlight eruditely the theoretical and practical use of a practice-orientated perspective of knowledge. Therefore, the practice of mediating and managing knowledge becomes particularly relevant to the trust building process. That is to say, not the knowledge per se, but the ways in which the individuals manage and mediate knowledge become relevant to our understanding of trust building.