Is trust scalable?

Charles Green (author of the book "Trust-based Selling") discusses this issue in a recent blog posting "Charles Handy vs. Web 2.0" at http://trustedadvisor.com/blog/22/, in his "Trust Matters" blog.  Here is my response:

Charlie, the scalability of trust is a very interesting topic.  I believe it is scalable.  There is ample evidence of that with (eBay for example, or even traditional brands).  However, I suspect that greater scale, the  narrower context context must be.  In other words, if "A" trusts "B" for "C", then more "A"s  require a smaller "C".   For example, eBay allows me to trust (or rely on) an eBay merchant for a very limited set of things ("C"s) associated with getting expected value from the transaction.   However, my trust in friends and other members of my community can have a broader context ("C") in that I need to trust them for more things that affect my family's well-being (child walking to school, car parked in front of the house, keys to house, etc.).  However, the "A" must be smaller to accommodate a broader context for trust.

I'd also like to make a slight correction to your statement above "Alex Todd’s framework leverages information, not motives. Does information alone cover the trust waterfront?"  My Trust Enablement Framework explicitly considers Motivation as one of 6 conditions for trust.  Also, a person's motivation is information, even though it is usually implicit (not explicitly asserted).  Aligning the motivation of the parties is critical to for ensuring (preserving) longer term trust, as it allows relying parties to feel confident that decisions will continued to be made that are mutually beneficial in the future.

I hope you found this valuable.

Alex

What do you think?   What does it take to scale trust?