Abstract
Power and trust are two important issues of interorganizational relations in collaborative governance. This article develops a critical conceptual analysis of the dyadic relationship between power and trust in the context of collaborative governance. Three dynamic relationships and seven corresponding propositions are proposed regarding the shared sources of power and trust, the effects of power asymmetry and power sharing on trust building, and the influence of trust building on the management of power relationship in collaborative governance. These dyadic relations will help scholars and practitioners to deal with the dynamics brought forth by power and trust in collaboration.
Introduction
Collaborative governance has been studied extensively by both scholars and practitioners in recent decades. Similar terms, including partnership, alliance, network, and joint working, all capture this emerging phenomenon (Ansell & Gash, 2008; K. Emerson, Nabatchi, & Balogh, 2012; Huxham, Vangen, Huxham, & Eden, 2000). In this article, we define collaborative governance as a multi-organizational arrangement where a number of identified participants work together based on deliberative consensus and collective decision making to pursue shared purposes (Ansell & Gash, 2008; K. Emerson et al., 2012; Huxham et al., 2000; Ran & Qi, 2017).
Prior literature analyzed numerous factors impacting collaborative governance, among which power and trust are two important ones (Ansell & Gash, 2008; Huxham & Vangen, 2000). Most of the literature on power and trust in collaborative governance focused on their independent roles rather than their dynamic interplays (Ansell & Gash, 2008; Purdy, 2012; Saz-Carranza, Salvador Iborra, & Albareda, 2016; Vangen & Huxham, 1998; Vangen & Huxham, 2003). Studies on power in collaborative governance often consider power as a challenge to the success of collaboration due to potential negative effects resulted from unavoidable power asymmetry (Ansell & Gash, 2008; Provan & Milward, 2001; Purdy, 2012; Ran & Qi, 2016). Power asymmetry is commonly noted as a problem as power is almost always distributed asymmetrically across participants, which may lead to the manipulation by stronger actors in collaboration (Ansell & Gash, 2008; Bryson, Crosby, & Stone, 2006; Huxham & Vangen, 2005). Some literature further analyzed different sources and arenas of power in collaboration (Hardy & Phillips, 1998; Purdy, 2012), providing a framework to make sense of power dynamics in interorganizational domains. Scholars tend to view power sharing as a solution to power asymmetry but a series of challenges in sharing power is still difficult to overcome (Ansell & Gash, 2008; Gray, 1989).
Comparatively, trust is often considered in terms of its positive influence on collaboration (K. Emerson et al., 2012; Huxham et al., 2000; Ring & Van de Ven, 1992). The benefits of trust include developing positive attitudes and confidence between partners (Huxham et al., 2000; Ring & Van de Ven, 1992), cultivating mutual understandings (K. Emerson et al., 2012), lowing transaction cost (Berardo, Heikkila, & Gerlak, 2014; Gulati, 1995), boosting openness of expression (Van Oortmerssen, van Woerkum, & Aarts, 2014), promoting confliction resolution (Ring & Van de Ven, 1994), and improving performance of activities (Johnston, McCutcheon, Stuart, & Kerwood, 2004; Oh & Bush, 2016). Some researchers focused on trust building, providing a series of approaches to enhancing trust in collaboration, such as communication and adaption (Das & Teng, 1998), competence to perform in collaboration (Blomqvist & Ståhle, 2000), and collective problem-solving activities (Booher, 2004).
It is important to note that a set of challenges in power and trust building in collaborative governance are still unsolved effectively by the current literature, which largely focused on the individual roles of power and trust in collaboration, such as how to budget and justify the necessary time and cost in power and trust building in collaboration (Ansell & Gash, 2008), how to effectively manage various conflicts and reduce mistrust among stakeholders resulted from power issues (Gray, 1996; Huxham & Vangen, 2005), and how to cope with participants’ reluctance, possible stalemate, and inaction in sharing power (Gray, 1985). These unsolved challenges inspire us to study the relationship between power and trust from a dyadic perspective rather than focusing on their independent and individual roles in collaborative governance. In fact, both power and trust are social forces (Ireland & Webb, 2007), entangled and intertwined with each other to coordinate interactions between individuals or groups (Luhmann, 1979). The dyadic perspective often studies the common bases or sources of two concepts and their mutual influence on each other. Accordingly, we discuss three dyadic relationships between power and trust in collaborative governance: the shared sources of power and trust, the influence of power relationship on trust building, and the influence of trust building on power relationship. We argue that the three dyadic relationships will effectively address the challenges in power and trust building in collaborative governance. Promoting shared sources of power and trust can help participants save time and cost of collaboration by managing power relationship and building trust simultaneously. The influence of power relationship on trust building is important for understanding and managing various conflicts and reducing distrust among partners caused by power issues. The influence of trust building on the management of power relationship is significant for promoting confliction resolution, improving performance of activities, and reducing possible stalemate and inaction in pursuing power sharing. We believe the analysis of these three relationships can advance our understanding of power and trust both conceptually and practically.
From the conceptual perspective, most prior research on power and trust in collaborative governance stops at the individual roles, impacts and mechanisms of power or trust in collaboration (e.g., Bryson et al., 2006; Huxham, 2003; Purdy, 2012; Saz-Carranza et al., 2016; Vangen & Huxham, 2003). This limits our interpretation of power and trust as it fails to uncover some similarities and interactions between these two elusive concepts. Through a dyadic perspective that bridges these two concepts together, we identify certain important similarities and interactions between different dimensions of power and trust, such as their sources, types, and effects, all of which are helpful to further our understanding of these two critical concepts in collaborative governance.
From the practical perspective, as collaborative governance is full of paradoxes (Huxham et al., 2000), carrying the dynamics of dependency, cooperation, competition, and conflict, neither power nor trust alone can make the collaboration work effectively in practice. Focusing on the independent role of power or trust leads to difficulties in dealing with certain challenges in collaboration, such as time and cost consuming resulted from trust building (Ansell & Gash, 2008); questions on authority, transparency, and accountability caused by power disparities among participants (Purdy, 2012); and threats to the performance of collaboration due to stalemate and inaction provoked by pursuing inappropriate equality in power relationship (Gray, 1985). The dyadic analysis of power and trust used in this article provides a different way of thinking and solving these issues. Taking advantage of some underlying relationships between different dimensions of power and trust provides important managerial implications in collaborative governance, which can help participants consider their power and trusting relationships with each other simultaneously and explore some useful strategies in coordinating their interactions more effectively.
This article is organized as follows: We will first provide a critical review on power and trust in collaborative governance, and then propose three relationships and seven propositions between power and trust in the context of collaborative governance. We conclude this article with a discussion of conceptual similarities between power and trust, trust-based power and power-based trust, as well as a set of managerial implications for participants to manage power and trust in collaboration.
Power and Trust in Collaborative Governance
In this section, we will first review some general conceptualization of power and trust that is primary in literature to provide a basic introduction of these two complex concepts, such as their definitions and widely used typologies. Because this article discusses power and trust in the context of collaborative governance at organizational (meso and macro) levels rather than at interpersonal (micro) level, we will focus on some dimensions of power and trust that have been discussed frequently in collaborative governance literature, such as power asymmetry, power, and trust building in interorganizational interactions.
Power in Collaborative Governance
Essentially, power is a property of a relationship (R. M. Emerson, 1962), referring to a potential ability of controlling or influencing others (individuals, groups, or organizations). The control or influence can be conceptualized in terms of evoking an influence or change in others’ behaviors (Bachrach & Baratz, 1962; Dahl, 1957; Hunt & Nevin, 1974) or manipulating others’ desires, attitudes, and behaviors through social structure and cultural patterns (Dawson, 1996; Lister, 2000; Lukes, 1974). Scholars categorize power in many different ways, such as a widely used typology proposed by French and Raven (1959) where power was categorized into reward power, coercive power, legitimate power, referent power, and expert power. A binary categorization is also frequently used: coercive or noncoercive (Ireland & Webb, 2007). Coercive power refers to the actors’ ability to control negative or undesired outcomes through punishment or threatened sanctions (French & Raven, 1959; Molm, 1997). Noncoercive power is the ability to promote positive or desired outcomes by providing or withholding rewards (Molm, 1997).
In recent years, scholars have made good attempts in expanding the conceptualization of power beyond individual or group exercising power, which is helpful in studying power in the context of interorganizational collaboration. For example, Crosby and Bryson (2005) used structuration theory specifically to understand power in settings where no one is in charge. Power is viewed as organizational controls of ideas, resources, rules, modes, media, and methods in interorganizational dynamics. Applying this understanding of power in collaborative governance, what literature recognized as ambiguous, complex, and rapid changing nature of power in collaboration (Huxham et al., 2000; Purdy, 2012) could be elucidated by a framework that delineates the influencing factors in power relationship in a collaborative network (Ran & Qi, 2017).
To understand power in collaborative governance, Huxham and Vangen (2005) proposed two levels of power in interorganizational relations: the macro level and micro level. The macro-level power is about various sources of power and the power shift from one partner to another with the transfer of power sources between partnering organizations. The power sources are “macro” as they are related to groups, organizations, or networks rather than to individuals in collaborations (Huxham & Beech, 2008). The micro-level perspective on power focuses on the way in which power is enacted by individuals (who are often the representatives of partnering organizations) or the partnering organization (as a collective entity) during the daily interaction in collaboration, such as managing membership and setting agenda (Huxham & Vangen, 2005). For instance, reward or coercive power exists when some representatives (at micro level) perceive that other partners can use resources (at macro level) to control or influence them by rewarding for compliance or by punishing for noncompliance (Purdy, 2012).
In collaborative governance, power-related issues have been analyzed extensively, such as major sources of power (Hardy & Phillips, 1998), different arenas of power (Purdy, 2012), and factors affecting power relationship (Hardy & Phillips, 1998), among which power asymmetry has been regarded as the most critical issue (Huxham et al., 2000; Provan & Milward, 2001; Purdy, 2012). To address the problems caused by power asymmetry, researchers advocated power sharing as a solution (Berkes, 2010; Huxham et al., 2000). Power sharing can produce ethos of cooperation and trust (Linder, 1999); promote sharing of responsibility, knowledge, and risk (Linder, 1999); establish firm partnerships (Carmichael & Knox, 1999); secure legitimacy of governance (Jentoft, van Son, & Bjørkan, 2007); and reduce fragmentation (Ehler, 2003). Difficulties in power sharing have also been recognized, such as the time-consuming process of fostering trust to share power, stalemate, and inaction caused by poor implementation of power and failed collaboration due to unwillingness to share power (Coff, 1999; Gray, 1985).
All of these conceptualizations of power constitute the major power mechanisms, which affect actors’ behaviors in face of different possibilities (Luhmann, 1979) and coordinate social interactions between actors (Bachmann, 2001). They provide a sound base for scholars to further investigate power issues in collaborative governance.
Trust in Collaborative Governance
Similar to power, trust has also been studied in different disciplines, all characterizing trust in terms of “confident expectations” and “willingness to be vulnerable” (Bozaykut & Gurbuz, 2015; Carnevale & Wechsler, 1992; Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman, 1995; Rousseau, Sitkin, Burt, & Camerer, 1998). Trust implies confident expectations of outcomes of an uncertain event, with one party willing to give up the control over outcomes and to be vulnerable to risks from another party (Hosmer, 1995; Zand, 1972). A trustor’s confident expectations come from a trustee’s certain characteristics perceived by the trustor. Three characteristics of a trustee are prominently discussed in literature (Mayer et al., 1995; Mayer & Gavin, 2005): ability (about skills and competencies), benevolence (about good motivation), and integrity (about adherence to moral and ethical principles). A trustor can be betrayed or undermined if the trustee is proved to lack such characteristics to realize the trustor’s confident expectations. The risks of trust include partners’ opportunistic action and inability to perform (Currall, 1992; Inkpen & Currall, 1998, 2004). The risks of trust may even result in considerable losses for the trustor and damages for a relationship when trust is misplaced (Bachmann, 2001).
To cultivate trusting relationship in collaborative governance, both interpersonal and interorganizational levels of trust should be taken into account, because individuals as points of contact between organizations and partnering organizations represented by these individuals are important for trust building in collaborative governance. Interpersonal trust has two noteworthy types: affect- and cognition-based trust (Blomqvist, 1997; Lewis & Weigert, 1985; McAllister, 1995). Affect-based trust consists of emotional bonds, in which genuine care and concern for the welfare of partners are invested. Cognition-based trust is based on the economic rationality to generate rational reasons for trust. Interpersonal notion of trust can be extended to the interorganizational level, referring to the extent to which members of one organization have a collective trust orientation toward another organization (Dyer & Chu, 2000; Jeffries & Reed, 2000; Zaheer, McEvily, & Perrone, 1998). This collective trust orientation can be linked to the predictability of a partnering organization’s behavior toward a vulnerable focal organization, reflecting the confidence of the focal organization in its partnership with another organization (Gulati & Nickerson, 2008). Yet the collectively held trust orientation is not the simple aggregation of trust attitudes of all individuals in an organization because not all organizational members are equally involved in organizational interactions with another organization due to the unequal power distribution within an organization (Blomqvist & Ståhle, 2000; Janowicz-Panjaitan & Krishnan, 2009).
In collaborative governance, trust, both at the interpersonal level and interorganizational level, is produced and reproduced through interactions over time. Interorganizational trust is tied to interpersonal trust through institutionalization (Sydow, 1998; Zaheer et al., 1998), started when individuals as points of contact between organizations developed trust orientation on each other during the collaborative work. Trust can be further strengthened, recreated, patterned, and institutionalized throughout the collaborating organizations as the interaction continues (Zaheer et al., 1998). Through collaboration and interaction, interpersonal trust of the points-of-contact individuals will affect the trust orientation of other organizational members toward the partnering organization (Zaheer et al., 1998). As this trust orientation becomes institutionalized, an interorganizational trust is formed, which will further serve as a behavioral constraint on both organizations and individuals.
Trust has been identified as a key factor in collaborative governance (K. Emerson et al., 2012; Huxham & Vangen, 2005) because it can ensure adherence to agreed rules (Lyon, 2006); promote understanding of others’ interests, needs, and values (Ring & Van de Ven, 1994; Thomson & Perry, 2006); and improve performance (Child, 2001). Low level of trust will produce a series of problems in collaboration, such as insufficient commitment, strategies of manipulation, and dishonest communications (Ansell & Gash, 2008). Yet trust building is a time- and effort-consuming process (Henneman, Lee, & Cohen, 1995), in which repeated and quality interactions (K. Emerson et al., 2012), successful past actions and cooperation (Vangen & Huxham, 1998), and sufficient competence of partners (Blomqvist, 1997; Blomqvist & Ståhle, 2000) are needed.
Relationship Between Power and Trust in Collaborative Governance
The relationship between power and trust is generally believed as two-sided, both complementary and opposing (Bozaykut & Gurbuz, 2015; Ireland & Webb, 2007). For example, Luhmann (1979) argued power and trust are functionally equivalent alternative mechanisms in coordinating communication and social interaction. While coercive power may have negative effects on trust building (Frost & Moussavi, 1992) and there is almost no simultaneous coexist of coercive power and trust in relationships (Ireland & Webb, 2007), some other types of power, such as expert and referent power that can be exerted noncoercively, can exist simultaneously with trust (Fedor & Ramsay, 2007; Ireland & Webb, 2007). In collaborative governance, scholars believe that power asymmetry will undermine trust, and the excessive use of power will also do harm to trust (Gray, 1989). Built from these prior studies, we argue a contingent relationship between power and trust. We believe that the negative influences from power asymmetry and positive influences from power sharing on trust are not absolute but contingent upon many factors, such as different types of power exercised in collaboration. This contingent perspective (Ran & Qi, 2017) provides a holistic understanding of power asymmetry, power sharing, different types of power, and trust building in the dynamic context of collaboration.
The relationship between power and trust has also been revealed largely through the control function shared by power and trust. Power can be considered as an important mechanism of control when exerted (Geringer & Hebert, 1989; Reed, 2001). Trust is also believed as a specific type of control mechanism in social interaction (Merchant, 1985), which is a substitute mechanism for hierarchical control (Ring & Van de Ven, 1994). Researchers found that displays of power become a substitute for trust when there is a failure or deficiency of trust between actors (Bozaykut & Gurbuz, 2015). Participants may also resort to power due to its easiness to exercise compared with spending time and effort to foster and maintain trust (Bachmann, 2001; Bozaykut & Gurbuz, 2015). Extending this perspective, in this article, we will explore major functions shared by power and trust in collaboration. By exploring the shared sources of power and trust in collaboration, we argue that both power and trust can contribute to the formation of collective goals, group consensus and shared values, the improvement of participants’ compliance with other partners, and the enhancement of the legitimacy of collaboration. Complementary to the control function, all of these functions also play a significant role in promoting collaboration by reducing risks caused by opportunistic behaviors.
Moreover, as discussed previously, many scholars propose power sharing as a solution to power asymmetry in collaboration and encourage participants to pursuit power sharing to enhance the effectiveness of collaboration (Berkes, 2010; Carmichael & Knox, 1999; Ehler, 2003; Huxham et al., 2000; Jentoft et al., 2007; Linder, 1999). In this article, we propose trust building as a supplemental mechanism in tackling power asymmetry. When the existing power relationship is well established and promoted, or when power is difficult to share due to some historical or bureaucratic reasons, trust building will make participants more competent to ameliorate issues resulted from power asymmetry. Through trust building, participants’ abilities, such as identifying appropriate members to collaborate with, making agreement on collaboration goals, managing risks associated with opportunistic behaviors and vulnerability, and dealing with dynamics coming from environmental context, can be improved (Vangen & Huxham, 2003), which will help participants to handle the problems brought forth by power asymmetry.
Indeed, scholars tend to argue that trust is a beneficial factor in coordinating partners’ relationships because it can relief some negative outcomes caused by the exercise of power. However, we argue that although trust building is critical in collaboration, attention should also be paid to potential drawbacks of the extreme case of trust, blind trust, in collaborative governance. Blind trust can lead to the loss of collaborative advantages due to limited innovation and creativity (De Wever, Martens, & Vandenbempt, 2005; Jeffries & Reed, 2000). Blind trust could also lead to potential loss of sufficient mutual trust in collaboration if the trustees behave opportunistically (Nooteboom, Berger, & Noorderhaven, 1997). As a result, participants’ confidence in their relationship with others is weakened. This failure or deficiency of trust can increase the tendency of using power as a substitute for trust to handle collaborative dynamics (Bozaykut & Gurbuz, 2015), or some participants may even withdraw from the collaboration, which will result in more challenges in managing power relationships between partners.
In the following sections, we will detail three relationships and seven propositions between power and trust in collaborative governance, and then discuss the conceptual similarities between power and trust as a “twin” concept and the entangled dynamics in terms of trust-based power and power-based trust. We will end our discussion by exploring some managerial implications that are useful in developing strategies to manage power and trust in collaboration.
Three Relationships Between Power and Trust in Collaborative Governance
In this section, we provide a dyadic analysis of power and trust to facilitate a more comprehensive understanding of them in collaborative governance. Three relationships and seven corresponding propositions regarding power and trust in collaboration are identified.
Relationship 1: Shared Sources of Power and Trust in Collaborative Governance
The dynamic relationship between power and trust in collaborative governance starts from the bases or sources shared by them. Power and trust root in some shared sources, which are important for the management of power relationship and cultivation of trust in collaboration. As we mentioned in the previous section, sources of power and the shift of these power sources are at the macro level in collaborative governance, which are relevant to participant organizations rather than individuals who represent their organizations. It is true that power sources can derive from individuals in general, but in the specific context of collaborative governance, individuals as representatives of participant organizations are the people who enact power rather than actual entities who have power sources. It is the partnering organizations that possess power sources and form the macro-power context. Therefore, when we consider the similar sources shared by power and trust in collaborative governance, we start with the primary sources of power at the organizational level, which have been widely discussed in collaborative governance literature, including authority, resource control, and discursive legitimacy (Hardy & Phillips, 1998; Purdy, 2012). We argue that these power sources are also significant in generating trust among participants in collaboration.
Authority
Authority is a socially acknowledged and legitimate right to exercise judgment, make a decision, or take actions (Astley & Sachdeva, 1984; Purdy, 2012). Purdy (2012) argued that authority is different from power and contradicts with coercive force although it may be achieved coercively. People could exert power by virtue of their noncoercive, socially acknowledged, and legitimate right. In collaboration, power rooted in authority can rest with one particular participant or be dispersed among different participants (Hardy & Phillips, 1998).
Authority as a socially acknowledged and legitimate right implies group consensus, shared values, and promotion of collective goals (Grimes, 1978), which will encourage reciprocity, increase the degree of adaption among partners, and reduce the possibility of opportunistic behaviors, all of which are important sources of trust in collaboration (Das & Teng, 1998; Heide & John, 1992; Larson, 1992; Ouchi, 1980). When partners’ goals and interests are bonded through consensus and the authority of partners who exert power is accepted, they are more willing to adjust their own needs and behavioral patterns in collaboration and do favors instead of hurting each other. Thus, the collective goals, group consensus, and shared values associated with the power holders’ authority will enhance trust in collaboration.
Resource control
Resource control as a source of power has been emphasized in many studies (Astley & Sachdeva, 1984; K. S. Cook, 1977). Resource refers to any valued activity, service, or commodity (K. S. Cook, 1977), tangible or intangible. Controlling critical resources needed by others and the asymmetry in resource control can create dependency among actors, which will lead to power asymmetry (Casciaro & Piskorski, 2005; R. M. Emerson, 1962).
As we discussed in the previous section, affect- and cognition-based trust are two notable types of trust. The building of cognition-based trust among partners is closely related to resource control in collaborative settings. Cognition-based trust is based on rational choice in the interaction of economic change (Rousseau et al., 1998), during which trust emerges when the trustor perceives the benefits performed by a trustee’s action. According to resource dependence theory, a crucial precondition of collaboration is that participants can obtain some critical resources from other partners in collaboration that they otherwise cannot get access to (Wood & Gray, 1991). In this situation, those participants who can bring critical resources to their partners and benefit the collaboration are more likely to obtain their partners’ cognition-based trust. This cognition-based trust relying on calculation and rational choice appears more often in the early formation process of collaboration (Child, 2001).
The resources controlled by participants also indicate participants’ ability in benefiting partners in collaboration. Trust often stems from the belief that a given partner with sufficient resources will have the ability to properly perform a given set of tasks in the partnership (Ireland & Webb, 2007; Mayer et al., 1995). From this analysis, resource control is a source for both power and trust in collaborative arrangements.
Discursive legitimacy
Legitimacy is defined as “a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions” (Suchman, 1995, p. 574). A variety of “strategies” or “tactics” to obtain or preserve legitimacy are discursive in nature (Phillips, Lawrence, & Hardy, 2004; Seidl, Sanderson, & Roberts, 2013), resting heavily on the interactive process of conveying ideas in a discourse through which we construct, interpret, discuss, and analyze problems (Seidl et al., 2013; Steffek, 2009; Suchman, 1995).
Power derived from discursive legitimacy is rooted in society (Huxham & Vangen, 2005), and it becomes stronger when the values, norms, and beliefs represented by power holders are widely shared and relatively uncontested (Purdy, 2012). In collaborative governance, when a participant can speak of a socially important or collectively desired issue, discursive legitimacy will afford them more power in some key arenas such as prioritization and framing of issues to be addressed (Purdy, 2012).
Discursive legitimacy is also a source of trust between partners. Through discursive process of sense giving and sense making (Weick, 1995), participants’ compliance with values, norms, and beliefs can be developed in collaboration. Based on this compliance, participants are more likely to perceive benevolence and integrity from each other and have positive response to the participants within their own groups and partnerships, viewing them as more trustworthy (Williams, 2001). Moreover, participants with more discursive legitimacy can exert more influences on the prioritization and dominance of the important issues identified in collaboration (Purdy, 2012), upon which diverse goals of participants can be converged. These participants with discursive legitimacy can obtain more trust from others by framing or representing these convergent goals shared in collaboration.
In summary, authority, resource control, and discursive legitimacy serve as profound sources of power and trust, which makes power and trust become “twin” concepts that are rooted in these shared sources. The effective enhancement of these three shared sources will promote a participant’s access to power and gain of trust in collaboration. Based on these arguments, we suggest the following proposition:
Relationship 2: Influence of Power Relationship on Trust Building in Collaborative Governance
Both collective identity formation and justice preservation are believed as critical factors for trust building (Child, 2001; Das & Teng, 1998; Korsgaard, Schweiger, & Sapienza, 1995; Kramer, 1993; Rousseau et al., 1998), but both of them will encounter some challenges due to a primary concern on the relative power of participants in collaboration, that is, power asymmetry and power sharing (Ansell & Gash, 2008; Hardy & Phillips, 1998; Huxham et al., 2000; Purdy, 2012; Saz-Carranza et al., 2016; Vangen & Huxham, 2003). When participating in a collaboration, participants’ individual identities are at stake if their autonomous goals differ from the collaboration’s goals, and participants tend to protect their own identities by having individual control over collaboration. In this case, it is unavoidable for participants to construct a new collective identity for the collaboration (Thomson & Perry, 2006). Similarly, the challenges to justice preservation are also unavoidable in collaboration in that asymmetrically distributed power will always impact justice among participants.
Influence of power relationship on collective identity
An important reality in collaborative governance is that participants share a dual identity: distinct self-identity separated from (although simultaneously with) a collective identity (Thomson & Perry, 2006). Self-identity focuses on the distinct attributes, autonomy, and self-goals (Thomson & Perry, 2006), while collective identity “addresses the ‘we-ness’ of a group, stressing the similarities or shared attributes around which group members coalesce” (Cerulo, 1997, p. 386). This dual identity leads to the intrinsic tension between self-interest and collaborative interest as well as dilemma between autonomy of individual organizations and accountability to other partners (Huxham, 1996; Thomson & Perry, 2006). Compared with self-identity, the reinforcement of collective identity can enhance an actor’s perception of trusting relationship with other partners (De Cremer & Van Vugt, 1998).
Partners in collaboration protect their self-identities by maintaining individual control rather than sharing control with others (Thomson & Perry, 2006). Power is asymmetric; powerful participants can have more power to control others and emphasize their own identities, interests, and goals, especially when their own interests and goals conflict with those of the collaboration. The emphasis on self-identity and ignoring collective identity can increase the uncertainty and vulnerability for less powerful participants, decreasing their trust in collaboration. Comparatively, if power is shared, participants will have stronger collective identity because of their stronger perception that the collaboration is based on equal inclusion, sufficient representativeness, as well as share accountability, congruent goal, and collective interests. This strong collective identity can breed trust by reducing uncertainty and vulnerability yet enhancing mutual dependency in collaboration.
Influence of power relationship on justice preservation
Justice is an important element of integrity (Colquitt, Scott, & LePine, 2007). Justice preservation is critical for trust building in interorganizational cooperation (Das & Teng, 1998; Korsgaard et al., 1995). Procedure justice and distributive justice are two related components of overall equity or fairness in creating trust (Kumar, 1996). A fair procedure is essential for institutional legitimacy through which trust can be created (Cropanzana, Bowen, & Gilliland, 2007). Otherwise, participants who perceive the unfair procedure may resort to opportunistic behaviors to achieve their goals. Equity in outcome distribution is important for trust building as well (Greenberg, 1987; Kay & Hagan, 2003). Calculative trust tells us that trust can rest on calculation of relative costs and benefits of each alternative (Child, 2001), and the perceived failure in distributive justice can undermine participants’ calculative trust due to their loss of benefits.
Power asymmetry may negatively affect justice in collaboration because participants with more power tend to focus on their own goals with less attention to others’ needs (Galinsky, Magee, Inesi, & Gruenfeld, 2006; Kipnis, 1976). This will make high-power participants less likely to treat others fairly and prevent them from caring about the norms to act fairly (Blader & Chen, 2012), which will undermine both cognition-based and affect-based trust. The possibility of opportunistic behaviors conducted by powerful ones may increase, which makes weaker participants feel unconfident and results in the decline of their trust.
Different from power asymmetry, power sharing can promote participants’ perceptions of fairness in collaborative process by enhancing representativeness, inclusion, and equal influence (Gray, 1985; Purdy, 2012), especially for less powerful but more vulnerable ones. In addition, a fair procedure of decision making in collaboration needs participants to share responsibilities and risks, which can be promoted by power sharing as well (Linder, 1999). Participants can also perceive more distribution justice when they share power with each other because the equity of outcome distribution relies on procedure justice to a great extent. The preservation of justice promoted by power sharing can cultivate trusting relationship among partners in collaboration.
Different types of power as contingency factors
We argue that the influences of power relationship, either power sharing or power asymmetry, on trust building are not absolute but contingent upon different types of power. Generally speaking, two commonly used types of power, coercive and noncoercive power, can moderate the influences of power relationship on trust building. French and Raven (1959) identified five types of power: expert power, referent power, legitimate power, reward power, and coercive power. The first four types of power are often exerted in a noncoercive manner (Molm, 1997), although some of them, such as legitimate power, can be exerted coercively. The different influences of power and power asymmetry on trust building can be impacted when power holders have sufficient competencies (expert power), enjoy personal admire (reference power), influence others by internalized values and accepted obligations (legitimate power), and improve other participants’ positive calculation of interests (reward power) (Nicholson, Compeau, & Sethi, 2001; Wahl, Kastlunger, & Kirchler, 2010). These four kinds of noncoercive power could cultivate trusting relationship by providing more profound sources of trust (Butler & Cantrell, 1984), producing consensus among partners (Ireland & Webb, 2007), promoting innovation to address threats (Cox, 2001), and enhancing legitimacy and stability to the relationship (Ireland & Webb, 2007; C. Oliver, 1990). Differently, coercive power is based on exercise of force (French & Raven, 1959), which can impede trust building as it may decrease rewards for participants and increase retaliation between partners (Ireland & Webb, 2007).
In summary, power sharing is beneficial for trust building while power asymmetry in collaboration brings difficulties in generating mutual trust between partners. Nevertheless, noncoercive and coercive power are important contingencies affecting trust building in collaboration. Based on these arguments, we suggest the following propositions:
Relationship 3: Influence of Trust Building on the Management of Power Relationship in Collaborative Governance
Researchers have emphasized the necessity of having a trusting relationship for successful collaborations (Das & Teng, 1998; Gray, 1985; Huxham et al., 2000; McGuire, 2006; Vangen & Huxham, 2003). The failure or deficiency of trust will make actors resort to pursuing and exerting power as a substitute mechanism to coordinate their interactions with others (Bozaykut & Gurbuz, 2015). In collaborative governance where power is almost always distributed asymmetrically, sufficient levels of trust is a lubricant for collaborative transactions and a soft control mechanism to manage power relationships even if certain partners are dominant in the collaboration (Das & Teng, 1998; A. L. Oliver, 1997; Ring, 1997; Vangen & Huxham, 2003). The positive influences of trust building on the management of power relationship are fundamentally based on the characteristics of trust and the small-wins strategy for trust building. However, trust building cannot always benefit the management of power relationships. The extreme case of trust, blind trust, will negatively affect the management of power relationships in collaboration.
Positive influence based on the characteristics of trust
Two basic characteristics of trust, confident expectations and willingness to be vulnerable, can help participants manage their power relationships in collaboration. Confident expectations imply the faith in others’ ethical, fair, and nonthreatening intentions and actions in a relationship (Carnevale & Wechsler, 1992; J. Cook & Wall, 1980). Willingness to be vulnerable means trustors are willing to place themselves in potential jeopardy or risks of others’ future behaviors (Carnevale & Wechsler, 1992; Hosmer, 1995). Confident expectations and willingness to be vulnerable provide foundations for Lukes’s (1974) perspective of power, which argues that the power from A on B makes B voluntarily willing to do what A wants. This “voluntary willingness” can be promoted by trust building between A and B because high levels of trust enhance B’s confident expectations about the outcome of A’s use of power as well as the willingness of taking the risks caused by A’s use of power. Trust building, as a lubricant for the interaction between A and B, is thus a soft mechanism that contributes to managing power relationships in collaboration.
Positive influence based on small-wins strategy
Small-wins strategy is a useful approach to coordinating the interactions among partners in collaboration by providing positive-feedback loop into collaborative process (Bajwa, Kitchlew, Shahzad, & Rehman, 2018). When small-wins strategy is used in trust building, it is helpful for managing power relationships in collaboration. Based on small-wins strategy, participants build trust gradually by getting started on some actions with partners and achieving some small positive outcomes, without having to deal with all aspects of trust building (Bryson, 1988; Vangen & Huxham, 2003). Through small-wins approach, participants can take limited risks and gradually achieve their goals rather than putting themselves into highly risky situations. With the increased achievement of small positive outcomes and decreased risks, participants tend to be more confident in their partners and more willing to accept the power relationship formed and stabilized in this process. Participants’ abilities to manage power issues can also be improved when building trust through small-wins strategy (Vangen & Huxham, 2003), such as identifying appropriate collaborating members, making agreement on collaboration aims, managing risks associated with opportunistic behaviors and vulnerability, dealing with dynamics coming from environmental context, avoiding radical challenges in a stable power relationship, and maximizing power sharing among partners. Some small-wins can also be produced in the process of managing power relationships in collaboration, and then provide the positive-feedback loop into collaboration for trust building among partners. This positive-feedback loop derived from small-wins strategy is critical for understanding the relationship between power and trust in collaborative governance.
Negative influence of blind trust
An extreme case of trust building is blind trust, referring to trustors’ largely unconditional perception and expectation that their trustees are trustworthy and could be given full discretion to behave (Brenkert, 1998; Williamson, 1993). Blind trust will lead to some unhealthy situations in interorganizational collaboration (Edelenbos & Klijn, 2007), such as impediment of innovation and creativity as well as increased risks for the trusting party.
The first unhealthy situation has to do with the loss of collaborative advantages due to the impediment of innovation and creativity. Innovation and creativity are important collaborative advantages in solving complex issues (Rogers & Weber, 2010). However, blind trust in collaboration is likely to cause participants think alike (Edelenbos & Klijn, 2007), accommodate excessively or please other partners (Bidault & Castello, 2010; Kern, 2000), have too much faith in partners’ actions (Edelenbos & Klijn, 2007), and even generate groupthink (Janis, 1972), all of which will hamper innovation and creativity (De Wever et al., 2005; Jeffries & Reed, 2000).
The second unhealthy situation caused by blind trust relates to potential risks taken by the trusting party. Trust can influence power positions between partners (Baier, 1986; Sydow, 1998), helping the trustee obtain more power than the trustor. When trust becomes blind, it will produce an extremely unbalanced power relationship between partners. The trustees become extremely powerful and can easily conduct opportunistic behaviors while the trustors will recognize the risky situations that go beyond their expectations sooner or later (Nooteboom et al., 1997). Once opportunistic behaviors are conducted by the trustee, trustors are more likely to feel unsatisfied with their partners. Their previous mutual trust will easily be damaged or even turned into distrust (Edelenbos & Klijn, 2007; Nooteboom et al., 1997).
As these two unhealthy situations can increase participants’ dissatisfaction, diminish their trust, or even lead to distrust on the collaborative relationship, participants tend to have strong perceptions of uncertainty and vulnerability. When participants perceive the uncertainty and vulnerability unacceptable, they will either enhance their own influences on the collaborative process, especially decision-making process, by acquiring and exerting more power, or withdraw from the collaboration, both of which will impose more difficulties in managing power relationships in collaboration.
To sum up, trust building can contribute to the management of power relationship between partners because of the characteristics of trust and small-wins strategy. Nevertheless, blind trust will bring in a set of problems that increase the difficulties for managing power dynamics in collaboration. Based on these arguments, we suggest the following propositions:
Discussion
In this article, power and trust in collaborative governance are treated as entangled twins rather than one causing the other. Different from the causality that can identify which concept comes first and which concept causes the other, power and trust always come together like a “twin,” share similar sources, and entangle with each other. That is, as twins, power and trust largely share same sources and enjoy significant conceptual similarities. However, as entangled twins, power and trust co-existed in any social relation, generating a complex interplay between them.
Power and Trust as Entangled Twins
We argue that besides the same sources discussed earlier, the concepts of power and trust share some conceptual similarities as well, a critical aspect in analyzing their interplay. Fundamentally, both power and trust are relational constructs, in which certain patterns of attitudes and behaviors exist among different actors. Power is a property of relationship based on the dependence between actors, either balanced or imbalanced (R. M. Emerson, 1962). Similarly, trust involves a relationship between the trustor and trustee, indicating that the trustor usually has positive expectations and willingness to be vulnerable in the trusting relationship with the trustee. Furthermore, both power and trust have perceptual basis, relevant to the perception of participants in a relationship. Power relates to power recipients’ perceptions of others’ ability to control or influence them, either in a coercive or noncoercive way. The perceptual aspect of trust is about a faith in others’ will, ability, and behavior. Last but not the least, both power and trust are reciprocal concepts. One actor exerting power or acting to trust will be reciprocated for such behavior simultaneously or at a future point of time, though the degree of reciprocated power and trust between them are not necessarily the same. The actor exerting power will affect the desire and behaviors of power recipients who will also, in turn, influence the power holder’s decision and action. Trust is reciprocal in terms of the goodwill of mutual benefits between actors (Carnevale & Wechsler, 1992).
Power and trust, as twin concepts, are two crucial mechanisms entangled in managing interorganizational relationships in collaboration. On one hand, trust can serve as a base of power, making this type of trust-based power as innocuous “façade of trust” that is less visible, taken-for-granted, and stable (Hardy, Phillips, & Lawrence, 1998; Kroeger, 2012). Through acquiring the shared sources, trustors can obtain more power and preserve this power by building trust to influence the trustees’ perceptions, cognitions, and preferences. This trust-based power is consistent with Lukes’s (1974) conception of power from social construction perspective. Power relationships based on trust has the potential to be more effective and enduring as it is viewed as natural and beneficial by participants (Kroeger, 2012; Lukes, 1974). However, when a trusting relationship evolved into blind trust, the impediment of innovative solutions to complex problems and high risks of trustees’ opportunistic behaviors may undermine the benefits of trustors and cause trustors’ disappointment sooner or later, which will ultimately diminish trust or even lead to distrust, thus further damage the trust-based power.
On the other hand, power plays a significant role in building trust, especially in the production of institutionalized trust (Kroeger, 2012). Similar to trust-based power, the sources shared by power and trust also contribute to generating power-based trust when power holders obtain or control these shared sources effectively. During the interaction between actors, to foster shared meaning and compliant behaviors, power holders can use their power to determine formal institutional rules and templates regulating participants’ behaviors as well as to affect informal routines and practices shaping participants’ perceptions, cognitions, and preferences (Hardy et al., 1998; Kroeger, 2012). All of these formal and informal factors constitute a set of institutional patterns through which trust can be cultivated. When these institutional patterns are formed under the influence of power, trust is ingrained in the power relationships in which conflicts between actors are less observable. Nevertheless, if the power relationship is so asymmetrical that it leads to excessive actual and observable conflicts between partners, this type of power-based trust will be at risk due to the resistance and challenges from trustors whose benefits are undermined excessively by powerful ones.
Managerial Implications
In this article, to interpret the complex dynamics of power and trust, we analyzed three important dyadic relationships between them, which are helpful for practitioners managing interorganizational relationships in collaborative governance.
First, participants should manage power asymmetry and build trust by obtaining more similar sources (authority, resource control, and discursive legitimacy) shared by power and trust. If participants can improve their ability to obtain and use these shared sources, they can exert their power based on sufficient trust from their partners. Trust based on these shared sources can also legitimize and strengthen power relationships in collaboration. Both power and trust coming from these shared sources can contribute to securing commitment from members, building legitimacy for the collaboration, and creating a favorable environment for productive interaction, which are significant factors in managing a collaborative network (Mandell, 2001). Therefore, it is important for different participants to recognize and enhance the particular authority they have, the useful resources they control, and the specific discursive legitimacy they can increase.
For example, different from nonprofit and private organizations, a government’s authority is tied to its legitimate right of establishing and enforcing rules in governance (Purdy, 2012). If the government as a participant can enhance this authority by establishing and enforcing rules in collaborative governance appropriately, it can legitimize its exercise of power, promote reciprocity, increase adaption, and reduce opportunistic behaviors in collaboration, all of which can cultivate other partners’ trust on it. Participants also need to evaluate what resources they control are needed by other partners in collaboration, such as human resource, financial resource, and technology, and then benefit other partners and the collaboration by providing these resources effectively to have a solid foundation for obtaining power and generating trust from other partners. In addition, based on various roles played by different types of participant organizations in a society, it is critical for them to speak on behalf of certain important values of norms of a society. For instance, when environmental organizations collaborate with government and other private organizations, they can focus on speaking on behalf of the societally important ideal of ecological preservation to obtain more power and trust in collaboration (Purdy, 2012).
Second, participants should build trust under certain power arrangements by exerting power in a noncoercive way. In practice, noncoercive way of exerting power is operationalized as several types of assistance provided by the actors who exert this power, such as rewards, knowledge, or expertness (Lusch & Brown, 1982). In contrast, the indicator of coercive way of exerting power is different in that it involves potential punishment or threat to the power recipients based on the exercise of force (French & Raven, 1959; Lusch & Brown, 1982; Molm, 1997). Participant organizations need to manage their collaboration in collaborative and nonhierarchical ways (Thomson & Perry, 2006). This managing approach requires participants prevent themselves from using potential punishment or threat to their partners, especially to those less powerful partners. Instead, participants who provide high-quality assistance in collaboration can legitimize their efforts to gain power and help to get the power recipients to yield power willingly (Lusch & Brown, 1982).
Coercive power may result in aversive consequences perceived by power recipients and lead to the decrease of satisfaction and increase of resistance, while noncoercive power can reflect the power holder’s ability to provide potential assistance, which are evaluated as desirable by power recipients. Trust can be fostered in the process of noncoercive exercise of power as it increases the perceived legitimacy of power and authority (Hough, Jackson, Bradford, Myhill, & Quinton, 2010), improves voluntary compliance (Wahl et al., 2010), and promotes the integration (Yeung, Selen, Zhang, & Huo, 2009), all of which will help to relief potential resistance of exercising power. This managerial implication provides a perspective to answer the key question asked by Huxham and Vangen (2005): “whether and how power imbalances can be deliberately shifted to sustain an adequate level of trust” (p. 171). We believe that trusting relationship can be promoted by focusing on noncoercive way of using power to mitigate power imbalance.
Third, participants should prevent themselves from excessively relying on either power or trust in collaboration. Although exerting power noncoercively can contribute to trust building, excessive use of power, coercively or noncoercively, will intensify the problem of power asymmetry thus undermining trust building. Exerting power implies the power holder’s ability to withhold resources or assistance from a relationship, which will constrain other partners’ opportunities and prospects of long-term survival and development (Ireland & Webb, 2007). Trusting relationship is difficult to promote if some participants concern about their long-term survival and development in a collaboration. It is also necessary for participants to avoid trusting their partners “blindly,” which will undermine the reciprocity, trust, and commitment of participants in a long term.
Given the complexity and uncertainty of collaboration, both dynamism and inertia can be created in collaborative practices (Thomson & Perry, 2006), which requires participants understand the variable nature of both power and trust when interacting with other partners. The adjustment of power relations and evolvement of trusting relations are contingent upon different factors relevant to collaboration. For instance, when participants consider to share power in collaboration, it is necessary for them to consider some important contingencies (Ran & Qi, 2017), such as institutional environment external to collaborations (e.g., static or not), different missions accomplished by collaborations (e.g., exigent or not), different types of collaborative networks (e.g., mandated or voluntary), previous power-sharing experience of participants (e.g., rich power-sharing experience or not), diffusion of power sources among participants (e.g., widely diffused or not), and cost-benefit calculation in collaborations (e.g., acceptable or not).
Rational cost-benefit analysis is important for participants when developing trusting relationship in collaboration. Although participants in collaboration might not initially start with a cost-benefit analysis but start with a kind of idealism in which trust is a key element (Thomson & Perry, 2006), they will then start to realize that there is a cost they have to pay in collaboration (Thomson, 2001). If the cost of trust building is much more than the benefits gained in the collaboration or the risk of high-level trust is extremely large, participants need to reconsider the trusting relationship with partners or even resort to using power appropriately.
Certainly, due to the complexity of power and trust, it is unrealistic to sort out or exhaust all relevant elements, factors, or dimensions involved in the dynamic interplay between them. For example, in the second relationship between power and trust, we cannot exhaust all contingency factors influencing the relationship between power sharing/power asymmetry and trust building in collaboration. We expect future studies, both conceptual and empirical, can further investigate more contingencies to develop a more comprehensive framework. Similarly, when we discuss how collective identity and justice preservation are affected by power asymmetry and power sharing, we realize that some other factors, such as individual participants’ moral level and institutional rules, can also impact collective identity and justice preservation, which, however, are beyond the scope of this article. Moreover, we proposed seven propositions on power and trust in this article, but these propositions are conceptual formulations that need to be operationalized in the future. Researchers have been struggling to empirically test both power and trust, and many measurements of power and trust have been developed in terms of perceptual rather than objective dimensions. We hope the conceptual exploration about the interplay between power and trust discussed in this article could shed some light on future empirical studies that this field is in dire need.
Conclusion
Power and trust are the basic entangled building blocks of partners’ interaction in collaborative governance. But the relationships between them in collaboration are far from clear in prior literature. In this article, we analyzed the roles of power and trust through a dyadic approach and conceptualize their interdependence to disentangle these twin concepts. The three relationships and seven propositions between power and trust proposed in this article provide a starting point for an empirical examination of power and trust. Our article also sheds light on how to promote a successful collaboration by managing power and trust in practice. This article calls on more dyadic or multi-level research investigating the complex relationships between power and trust empirically, which are significant for understanding complex dynamics in collaborative governance.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
