Calculativeness, Trust, and Economic Organization

Abstract My main purpose in this chapter is to explicate what Diego Gambetta has referred to as “the elusive notion of trust” (1988, p. ix). As the literature on trust reveals, and as developed here, “trust” is a term with many meanings. The relentless application of calculative economic reasoning is the principal device that I employ to define and delimit the elusive notion of trust. The calculative approach to economic organization is sketched in Section 1. The concept of “calculative trust,” which enjoys widespread and growing acceptance but with which I take exception, is examined in Section 2. Societal trust, which works through the institutional environment and takes a series of hyphenated forms, is briefly treated in Section 3. Nearly non calculative uses of trust of a personal kind are developed in Section 4. Concluding remarks follow in Section 5.