The Role of Institutional Logics in Institutional Trust Formation: A Cognitive Frames Perspective

Institutions are central components of organizational and managerial life, and powerfully influence how individuals think, feel, and act toward one another in society. Because of their recognized importance, management and organizational scholars continue to wrestle with understanding core institutional trust dynamics. We review and extend past work on this issue by using a multi-disciplinary analysis of the institutional trust literature to focus on the important role that institutional logics play in institutional trust formation. Drawing on diverse disciplinary literatures, we identify four cognitive frames that stakeholders use to evaluate the trustworthiness of institutions. Building on this work, we distinguish three categories of mechanisms through which institutions engender trust. Following our review, we examine how the perspectives outlined here can be used to refine and extend research in this area by analyzing the impacts of contexts, multilevel influences, and competing logics on stakeholders’ institutional trust evaluations.