Originally published: . Volume 14, No. 4. Source pages: 11, 12.
Dr. Tyree Mitchell, Assistant Professor at the School of Leadership and Human Resource Development at Louisiana State University, has created a fascinating yet practical book about trust and global relationships. In Searching for Trust in the Global Economy, Mitchell and coauthor Dr. Jeanne Brett, Dewitt W. Buchanan Distinguished Professor of Dispute Resolution and Organizations, Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, tackle the fundamental issue of doing business worldwide. They answer the question of just how new business owners develop the trust necessary to be productive and creative with associates on the other side of the world. The authors deal with the connections between trust and cooperation, and how information is shared in a context of competition. They affirm that people around the world understand the importance of trust, but that there are significant and major differences between cultures in how trust is developed. Delving into these differences constitutes the majority of Searching for Trust in the Global Economy. The two authors interviewed managers from across four regions of the world. This included East Asia, the Middle East/South Asia, Latin America, and the West. They focused on new business developers' views about actions and standards that managers use when searching and developing trust with collaborators across the globe. Along with the book, Mitchell and Brett first published a scholarly article about their initial research in the International Journal of Conflict Management. They also published a practitioner article in the Harvard Business Review, " How to Build Strong Business Relationships — Remotely," in May 2022. The authors built on the literature about trust but also included the cultural differences that have to do with a particular characteristic of cultures–the looseness and tightness variable. While exploring the differences and similarities between people in the different regions of the world, the authors found that there is an important similarity–person-to-person interaction is, for all people, central in the decision for an individual to trust another. In Searching for Trust in the Global Economy the authors lay out the key actions that they viewed emerged when individuals decide who and what to trust. These key actions are due diligence, brokering, testing, and goodwill building. The authors define due diligence as searching for information that has to do with the person’s reputation. Brokering is defined as seeking assurance of the partner’s trustworthiness by way of a third-party. The authors explain testing as getting a potential partner to act or react to a question or statement, and this then generates firsthand information and experience so that the individual can evaluate trustworthiness.
The last action is goodwill building. This is interacting and getting to know the partner, and it can range from a few minutes of small talk to extended time spent together. Searching for Trust also covers what the authors call "CORR" standards for deciding to trust. These standards are competence, openness, respect, and rapport. The competent standard includes the partner’s expertise and track record for getting things done and the quality of the work. Openness is how honest and willing to share information the new partner appears. Respect is defined as the ability to show regard despite differences and honor those differences that may arise. Rapport, the final standard, is defined as “felt affinity and shared values.“ The authors explain that the trust can be understood from the perspective of differences between tight and loose cultures. Tight cultures have many social norms that people are supposed to follow and there are clear expectations about how individuals are to act. Loose cultures provide a higher degree of freedom and allow the individual to behave in ways that may not fit norms. Loose cultures are more accepting and tolerant than tight cultures which are more disapproving when people do not comply with norms. Brett and Mitchell map trust on this matrix of characteristics, pointing to the World Values Survey trust data. They explain that the West scores at about +.8 on trust along with East Asia which scores at about +.7. In contrast, Latin America scores in the low range at about –.8 and the Middle East/South Asia scores at about –.6 on trust. These characteristics give the framework for the rest of the book and for providing the reader with recommendations on how to deal with business relationships. The authors begin with Middle East/South Asia and title the chapter “Respect rules.” The area is low trust, heterogeneous, and with a tight culture. They note that due diligence and brokering are key early actions in this area. Goodwill building is a necessary element of establishing personal relationship along with hospitality and respect, the authors explain.
In Chapter 4 the authors have gathered information on Latin America where rapport is a requirement. They recommend to build rapport by accessing shared values, and the authors point out that the culture is low trust and culturally loose. For the high trust culture of East Asia, the authors note that the dominant core characteristic for trust building is competence. They recommend the first step to be brokering. For the West, which is loose with high trust, the key is to be open to sharing information, explain the authors. How did Dr. Mitchell originally come up with the idea about trust that led to his project on the topic? "There were several reasons why I wanted to write Searching for Trust in the Global Economy," he said. "When I was a visiting scholar at Northwestern University before I came to LSU, my colleague and friend, Jeanne Brett, and I were interviewing managers from all around the world about how they search for trustworthy business partners and what ultimately influences their decisions to trust potential business partners," said Dr. Mitchell. "We ended up interviewing 82 managers from 33 different countries. After presenting our work at a major international conference, publishing a peer-reviewed journal article on the topic, and publishing a paper in Harvard Business Review about our work, we still had so much to share about what we learned about searching for trust around the world," he said. "The topic is important, as business relationships characterized by trust are important for global economic development," said Dr. Mitchell. "The topic is also unique, as there are books on cultural etiquette, books on culture with maybe a chapter on trust, and entire books on trust written primarily from a Western perspective. We captured such valuable insights from international perspectives that we felt could help people all around the world build strong business relationships characterized by trust." In Dr. Mitchell's opinion, what are the most important takeaways from his research/book? "When you look at most of the research and theory on trust, a fair amount of it approaches trust from a Western perspective, which is somewhat problematic when you want to understand trust in different parts of the world. Research from the World Values Survey shows that trust is relatively high in the West in comparison to Latin America and the Middle East/South Asia," said Dr. Mitchell. "So, when you ask Americans if most people can be trusted, the answer is more often yes than no, relatively speaking. We found fascinating differences when we asked managers about the ways they searched for information to make the trust decision and the criteria they were using for decisions. "Trust is the foundation for strong working relationships, but the way people from different cultures search for and decide to trust varies," said Dr. Mitchell. "Searching for Trust in the Global Economy describes these cultural differences from the perspective of 82 managers from 33 different countries in four regions of the world." Scholars, practitioners, and organizations have praised the book for its accessibility and nuanced approach to a commonly discussed topic, said Dr. Mitchell. For example, Michele Gelfand, Professor of Organizational Behavior, Stanford Graduate School of Business, and Professor of Psychology by Courtesy, at Stanford University, an innovative research in the area of loose–tight phenomena praised the effort.
"Searching for Trust in the Global Economy is a must-read for anyone who is trying to build trust across cultural boundaries," she said. "Written by the foremost authorities on the topic, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of not only the key ways people around the world differ in their decision to trust, but why these differences have evolved in the first place. Filled with surprising insights that are based in the best science, along with practical advice on how to build new relationships across cultures, this book will forever change the way you view the world and make you more culturally intelligent." Zhi-Xue Zhang, Director, Institute of Social Science Survey, and Professor, Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, said, "Based on solid literature and insights from recent interviews with managers across four regions of the world, Jeanne and Tyree provide extremely useful information about the CORR standards for deciding to trust – competence, openness, respect, and rapport. The book is timely in that it offers managers practical tools and tips for building trust, which is the scarce currency of both business and human life in the contemporary world." And Elizabeth McCune, Director of Employee Listening, at Microsoft, said, "This book lays out an insightful cultural framework that provides a practical approach to unpacking the complexity of building trust across cultures. As a scientist- practitioner specializing in survey methodology, I’m eager to apply this framework toward creating trust with employees across the globe such that they feel safe and empowered to share their much-needed voices." Dr. Tyree Mitchell completed his predoctoral fellowship at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and received his PhD in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from DePaul University. His research focuses on group processes and intergroup relations in organizations, specifically within leadership, team, and negotiation contexts. His research has been funded by major funding agencies, such as the National Science Foundation, and has been published in high- impact peer-reviewed journals (e.g., Journal of Applied Psychology) and featured in popular press outlets (e.g., Forbes, Harvard Business Review). What have been the most enjoyable parts of publishing the book? "The rich interviews with insightful managers from all over the world and writing about those interviews with a dear friend and colleague," said Dr. Mitchell.
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