Searching for Trust in the Global Economy

Trust is the foundation for strong working relationships, but the way people from different cultures search for and decide to trust varies. Searching for Trust in the Global Economy describes these cultural differences from the perspective of 82 managers from 33 different national cultures in four regions of the world. It addresses the current global business climate with insights from managers describing how the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the process of searching for and deciding to trust new business partners.

Jeanne M. Brett and Tyree D. Mitchell propose a simple, but general framework that explains the cultural differences in deciding to trust new business partners. They suggest that the key to understanding cultural differences in the process lies in the interplay between cultural levels of trust and "tightness-looseness," or the degree to which a culture strongly enforces its norms. They explain how searching for and deciding to trust is different in the high trust, loose cultures of the West, the high trust, tight cultures in East Asia, the low trust, tight cultures in the Middle East/South Asia, and the low trust, loose cultures in Latin America.

Searching for Trust in the Global Economy is based on managers’ experiences building new business relationships around the world, but its practical advice for searching for and deciding to trust is useful not only for business leaders, but also for government, not-for-profit, and other leaders who are responsible for building new relationships in the global economy.

Jeanne M. Brett is the DeWitt W. Buchanan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Dispute Resolution and Organizations at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Tyree D. Mitchell is an assistant professor at the School of Leadership and Human Resource Development at Louisiana State University.