Trust Beyond Interpersonal Relationships: Unpacking Organizational Trust

Trust has often been understood as an interpersonal leap of faith between individuals. But increasingly, that leap is directed toward organizations and enacted by organizations. As enterprise algorithms, marketplace platforms, and distributed work arrangements replace face-to-face interactions, vulnerability sits less in individual people and more in collective systems. This makes organizational trust a practically important but conceptually underspecified construct. In this review, we conceptualize organizational trust as a collective phenomenon in which the trustor, the trustee, or both are organizations. To structure our review, we use a trustor–trustee matrix that distinguishes between three constellations of organizational trust: individual → organization, organization → individual, and organization → organization. We then introduce a sixfold typology that explains what element (i.e., metaphor, agent substitution, composition, identity, network, or actorhood) carries trust at the organizational level. We also offer a decision tree that links research questions, mechanisms, and operationalizations with the appropriate carrier. Finally, we close by identifying research priorities for future work on organizational trust.