Attributional sense‐making of distrust in professional service firms: Working in a coopetitive paradox

Abstract Distrust is an inevitable yet often overlooked feature of relationships in professional service firms (PSFs), where simultaneous demands to collaborate and compete produce a coopetitive paradox shaping everyday organizational life. Drawing on 50 in‐depth qualitative interviews using the critical incident technique, we examine how professionals attribute meaning to the development of distrust in their working relationships. The analysis identifies three recurring loci—readings of character and conduct (internal), signals from structures, processes, and cultures (external), and interactional cues in day‐to‐day exchanges (relational)—which often braid together into compound explanations for distrust that travel and endure. In high pressure, identity‐sensitive PSFs, coopetition heightens this braiding, making small ambiguities easier to read as self‐interest and harder to reverse. The study clarifies how distrust functions as an active, socially embedded process of meaning‐making and why it proves so durable in coopetitive settings.