Module 3: Group Discussion- Group 1

Accelerat ing the world's research.

The Entangled Twins: Power and Trust in Collaborative Governance

Bing Ran

Administration & Scciety

Cite this paper

Get the citation in MLA, APA, or Chicago styles

Downloaded from Academia.edu 

Related papers

Collaborat ing Across Boundaries Series Inter-Organizat ional Networks A Review of the Litera… Gail MacKean

Governing Cross-sector, Inter-organizat ional Collaborat ions Chris Cornforth

Avoiding separat ion: sport partner perspect ives on a long-term inter-organisat ional relat ionship Wendy Frisby, Lucie Thibault

Download a PDF Pack of the best related papers 

https://doi.org/10.1177/0095399718801000

Administration & Society

1 –30

© The Author(s) 2018

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/0095399718801000

journals.sagepub.com/home/aas

Original Article

The Entangled Twins: Power and Trust in Collaborative Governance

Bing Ran1 and Huiting Qi1

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.

Keywords

power, trust, collaborative governance

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 &

1Penn State Harrisburg, Middletown, PA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Bing Ran, School of Public Affairs, Penn State Harrisburg, 777 West Harrisburg Pike,

Middletown, PA 17057, USA.

Email: [email protected]

801000 AASXXX10.1177/0095399718801000Administration & SocietyRan and Qi research-article2018

2 Administration & Society 00(0)

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 partici-

pants 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 gover-

nance, 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 asym-

metrically across participants, which may lead to the manipulation by stron-

ger 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 interorga-

nizational 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 con-

fidence 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 con-

fliction 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 lit-

erature, which largely focused on the individual roles of power and trust in

Ran and Qi 3

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 shar-

ing 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 gover-

nance. 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 relation-

ships 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 rela-

tionship and building trust simultaneously. The influence of power relation-

ship 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 sig-

nificant 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 mecha-

nisms 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 similari-

ties and interactions between these two elusive concepts. Through a dyadic

perspective that bridges these two concepts together, we identify certain impor-

tant 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 para-

doxes (Huxham et al., 2000), carrying the dynamics of dependency, coopera-

tion, competition, and conflict, neither power nor trust alone can make the

collaboration work effectively in practice. Focusing on the independent role

4 Administration & Society 00(0)

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 account-

ability caused by power disparities among participants (Purdy, 2012); and

threats to the performance of collaboration due to stalemate and inaction pro-

voked 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 underly-

ing 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 rela-

tionships and seven propositions between power and trust in the context of

collaborative governance. We conclude this article with a discussion of con-

ceptual 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 dis-

cussed frequently in collaborative governance literature, such as power asym-

metry, power, and trust building in interorganizational interactions.

Power in Collaborative Governance

Essentially, power is a property of a relationship (R. M. Emerson, 1962), refer-

ring 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

Ran and Qi 5

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 categori-

zation is also frequently used: coercive or noncoercive (Ireland & Webb,

2007). Coercive power refers to the actors’ ability to control negative or unde-

sired 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 con-

ceptualization of power beyond individual or group exercising power, which

is helpful in studying power in the context of interorganizational collabora-

tion. For example, Crosby and Bryson (2005) used structuration theory spe-

cifically 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 indi-

viduals (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), differ-

ent 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,

6 Administration & Society 00(0)

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 possibili-

ties (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 char-

acterizing 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 litera-

ture (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’ opportu-

nistic 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 inter-

personal and interorganizational levels of trust should be taken into account,

because individuals as points of contact between organizations and partner-

ing 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,

Ran and Qi 7

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 ratio-

nal reasons for trust. Interpersonal notion of trust can be extended to the inter-

organizational 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 individu-

als 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 insti-

tutionalization (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 orga-

nizations as the interaction continues (Zaheer et al., 1998). Through collabo-

ration 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 adher-

ence 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.

8 Administration & Society 00(0)

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 communica-

tion and social interaction. While coercive power may have negative effects

on trust building (Frost & Moussavi, 1992) and there is almost no simultane-

ous 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 spe-

cific 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.

Ran and Qi 9

Moreover, as discussed previously, many scholars propose power sharing as a

solution to power asymmetry in collaboration and encourage participants to pur-

suit 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 mecha-

nism in tackling power asymmetry. When the existing power relationship is well

established and promoted, or when power is difficult to share due to some histori-

cal or bureaucratic reasons, trust building will make participants more competent

to ameliorate issues resulted from power asymmetry. Through trust building, par-

ticipants’ abilities, such as identifying appropriate members to collaborate with,

making agreement on collaboration goals, managing risks associated with oppor-

tunistic 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 coordinat-

ing partners’ relationships because it can relief some negative outcomes

caused by the exercise of power. However, we argue that although trust build-

ing is critical in collaboration, attention should also be paid to potential draw-

backs 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 suffi-

cient mutual trust in collaboration if the trustees behave opportunistically

(Nooteboom, Berger, & Noorderhaven, 1997). As a result, participants’ con-

fidence in their relationship with others is weakened. This failure or defi-

ciency 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” con-

cept 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.

10 Administration & Society 00(0)

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 gover-

nance 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 pos-

sess power sources and form the macro-power context. Therefore, when we

consider the similar sources shared by power and trust in collaborative gov-

ernance, we start with the primary sources of power at the organizational

level, which have been widely discussed in collaborative governance litera-

ture, 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 exer-

cise 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. Peo-

ple 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

Ran and Qi 11

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 empha-

sized 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 oth-

ers 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 eco-

nomic 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 collabo-

ration 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’ cogni-

tion-based trust. This cognition-based trust relying on calculation and ratio-

nal 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 per-

form 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 defi-

nitions” (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; Stef-

fek, 2009; Suchman, 1995).

12 Administration & Society 00(0)

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 fram-

ing 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), partici-

pants’ compliance with values, norms, and beliefs can be developed in col-

laboration. 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 dis-

cursive legitimacy can obtain more trust from others by framing or represent-

ing 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:

Proposition 1: The increasing acquisition of shared sources through author-

ity, resource control, and discursive legitimacy positively contributes to

both participant’s access to power and gain of trust in collaboration.

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 rela-

tive 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

Ran and Qi 13

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 col-

laboration in that asymmetrically distributed power will always impact jus-

tice among participants.

Influence of power relationship on collective identity. An important reality in col-

laborative 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 attri-

butes around which group members coalesce” (Cerulo, 1997, p. 386). This

dual identity leads to the intrinsic tension between self-interest and collabora-

tive interest as well as dilemma between autonomy of individual organiza-

tions 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 indi-

vidual 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 col-

laboration. The emphasis on self-identity and ignoring collective identity

can increase the uncertainty and vulnerability for less powerful partici-

pants, 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, suf-

ficient 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,

14 Administration & Society 00(0)

1996). A fair procedure is essential for institutional legitimacy through which

trust can be created (Cropanzana, Bowen, & Gilliland, 2007). Otherwise, par-

ticipants 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 atten-

tion 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 representative-

ness, inclusion, and equal influence (Gray, 1985; Purdy, 2012), especially for

less powerful but more vulnerable ones. In addition, a fair procedure of deci-

sion 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 shar-

ing 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 build-

ing 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, refer-

ent 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 inter-

nalized values and accepted obligations (legitimate power), and improve

Ran and Qi 15

other participants’ positive calculation of interests (reward power) (Nichol-

son, Compeau, & Sethi, 2001; Wahl, Kastlunger, & Kirchler, 2010). These

four kinds of noncoercive power could cultivate trusting relationship by pro-

viding 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 impor-

tant contingencies affecting trust building in collaboration. Based on these

arguments, we suggest the following propositions:

Proposition 2a1: Power asymmetry negatively influences trust building,

yet the more noncoercive the power exercised in collaboration is, the less

negative the influence of power asymmetry is on trust building.

Proposition 2a2: Power asymmetry negatively influences trust building,

and the more coercive the power exercised in collaboration is, the more

negative the influence of power asymmetry is on trust building.

Proposition 2b1: Power sharing positively influences trust building, and

the more noncoercive the power exercised in collaboration is, the more

positive the influence of power sharing is on trust building.

Proposition 2b2: Power sharing positively influences trust building, yet

the more coercive the power exercised in collaboration is, the less positive

the influence of power sharing is on trust building.

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 trans-

actions and a soft control mechanism to manage power relationships even if

certain partners are dominant in the collaboration (Das & Teng, 1998; A. L.

16 Administration & Society 00(0)

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 inten-

tions 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 (Car-

nevale & Wechsler, 1992; Hosmer, 1995). Confident expectations and will-

ingness 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 con-

fident 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 hav-

ing 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 build-

ing trust through small-wins strategy (Vangen & Huxham, 2003), such as iden-

tifying appropriate collaborating members, making agreement on collaboration

aims, managing risks associated with opportunistic behaviors and vulnerability,

Ran and Qi 17

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 relation-

ship 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 advan-

tages due to the impediment of innovation and creativity. Innovation and cre-

ativity 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’ dissatisfac-

tion, diminish their trust, or even lead to distrust on the collaborative relation-

ship, 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 collabora-

tive process, especially decision-making process, by acquiring and exerting

18 Administration & Society 00(0)

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 rela-

tionship 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:

Proposition 3a: Through promoting confident expectations and willing-

ness to be vulnerable as well as employing small-wins strategy, trust

building will positively influence the management of power relationship.

Proposition 3b: Blind trust leads to the loss of some collaborative advan-

tages and the excessive risks taken by trustors that will cause disappoint-

ment or even distrust, thereby negatively influences the management of

power relationship.

Discussion

In this article, power and trust in collaborative governance are treated as

entangled twins rather than one causing the other. Different from the causal-

ity 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 rela-

tion, 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 analyz-

ing 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 rela-

tionship 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

Ran and Qi 19

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 neces-

sarily 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 prefer-

ences. 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 inno-

vative solutions to complex problems and high risks of trustees’ opportunistic

behaviors may undermine the benefits of trustors and cause trustors’ disap-

pointment 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, espe-

cially 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 partici-

pants’ 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 pat-

terns 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.

20 Administration & Society 00(0)

Managerial Implications

In this article, to interpret the complex dynamics of power and trust, we ana-

lyzed 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 abil-

ity 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 sig-

nificant 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 govern-

ment’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 collabo-

ration, 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 gen-

erating 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

Ran and Qi 21

(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 ques-

tion asked by Huxham and Vangen (2005): “whether and how power imbal-

ances 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 noncoer-

cively can contribute to trust building, excessive use of power, coercively or

noncoercively, will intensify the problem of power asymmetry thus under-

mining 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 devel-

opment (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 commit-

ment 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

22 Administration & Society 00(0)

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 envi-

ronment external to collaborations (e.g., static or not), different missions

accomplished by collaborations (e.g., exigent or not), different types of col-

laborative networks (e.g., mandated or voluntary), previous power-sharing

experience of participants (e.g., rich power-sharing experience or not), diffu-

sion 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 develop-

ing trusting relationship in collaboration. Although participants in collabora-

tion 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 influenc-

ing the relationship between power sharing/power asymmetry and trust build-

ing 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 insti-

tutional 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 per-

ceptual 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’ inter-

action in collaborative governance. But the relationships between them in

Ran and Qi 23

collaboration are far from clear in prior literature. In this article, we ana-

lyzed the roles of power and trust through a dyadic approach and concep-

tualize 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 col-

laboration by managing power and trust in practice. This article calls on

more dyadic or multi-level research investigating the complex relation-

ships between power and trust empirically, which are significant for under-

standing complex dynamics in collaborative governance.

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 publi-

cation of this article.

ORCID iD

Bing Ran https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1179-9116

References

Ansell, C., & Gash, A. (2008). Collaborative governance in theory and practice.

Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 18, 543-571.

Astley, W. G., & Sachdeva, P. S. (1984). Structural sources of intraorganizational

power: A theoretical synthesis. Academy of Management Review, 9, 104-113.

Bachmann, R. (2001). Trust, power and control in trans-organizational relations.

Organization Studies, 22, 337-365.

Bachrach, P., & Baratz, M. S. (1962). Two faces of power. American Political Science

Review, 56, 947-952.

Baier, A. (1986). Trust and antitrust. Ethics, 96, 231-260.

Bajwa, S. U., Kitchlew, N., Shahzad, K., & Rehman, K. U. (2018). Public–Private

Partnership (PPP) as an interdependent form (I-form) organization. International

Journal of Public Administration, 41(11), 859-867.

Berardo, R., Heikkila, T., & Gerlak, A. K. (2014). Interorganizational engagement

in collaborative environmental management: Evidence from the South Florida

Ecosystem Restoration Task Force. Journal of Public Administration Research

and Theory, 24, 697-719.

Berkes, F. (2010). Devolution of environment and resources governance: Trends and

future. Environmental Conservation, 37, 489-500.

Bidault, F., & Castello, A. (2010). Why too much trust is death to innovation. MIT

Sloan Management Review, 51(4), 33-38.

24 Administration & Society 00(0)

Blader, S. L., & Chen, Y. R. (2012). Differentiating the effects of status and power:

A justice perspective. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102, 994-

1014.

Blomqvist, K. (1997). The many faces of trust. Scandinavian Journal of Management,

13, 271-286.

Blomqvist, K., & Ståhle, P. (2000, September). Building organizational trust. Paper

presented at the 16th Annual IMP Conference, Bath, UK.

Booher, D. E. (2004). Collaborative governance practices and democracy. National

Civic Review, 93(4), 32-46.

Bozaykut, T., & Gurbuz, F. G. (2015). Power and trust in organizational relations: An

empirical study in Turkish public hospitals. The International Journal of Health

Planning and Management, 30(1), E1-E15.

Brenkert, G. G. (1998). Trust, morality and international business. Business Ethics

Quarterly, 8, 293-317.

Bryson, J. M. (1988). Strategic planning: Big wins and small wins. Public Money &

Management, 8(3), 11-15.

Bryson, J. M., Crosby, B. C., & Stone, M. M. (2006). The design and implemen-

tation of Cross-sector collaborations: Propositions from the literature. Public

Administration Review, 66(Suppl. 1), 44-55.

Butler, J. K. Jr., & Cantrell, R. S. (1984). A behavioral decision theory approach

to modeling dyadic trust in superiors and subordinates. Psychological Reports,

55(1), 19-28.

Carmichael, P., & Knox, C. (1999). Towards “a new era”? Some developments in

governance of Northern Ireland. International Review of Administrative Sciences,

65, 103-116.

Carnevale, D. G., & Wechsler, B. (1992). Trust in the public sector: Individual and

organizational determinants. Administration & Society, 23, 471-494.

Casciaro, T., & Piskorski, M. J. (2005). Power imbalance, mutual dependence, and

constraint absorption: A closer look at resource dependence theory. Administrative

Science Quarterly, 50, 167-199.

Cerulo, K. A. (1997). Identity construction: New issues, new directions. Annual

Review of Sociology, 23, 385-409.

Child, J. (2001). Trust—The fundamental bond in global collaboration. Organizational

Dynamics, 29, 274-288.

Coff, R. W. (1999). When competitive advantage doesn’t lead to performance: The

resource-based view and stakeholder bargaining power. Organization Science,

10, 119-133.

Colquitt, J. A., Scott, B. A., & LePine, J. A. (2007). Trust, trustworthiness, and trust

propensity: A meta-analytic test of their unique relationships with risk taking and

job performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92, 909-927.

Cook, J., & Wall, T. (1980). New work attitude measures of trust, organizational

commitment and personal need non-fulfilment. Journal of Occupational and

Organizational Psychology, 53(1), 39-52.

Cook, K. S. (1977). Exchange and power in networks of interorganizational relations.

The Sociological Quarterly, 18, 62-82.

Ran and Qi 25

Cox, A. (2001). Managing with power: Strategies for improving value appropriation

from supply relationships. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 37(1), 42-47.

Cropanzana, R., Bowen, D. E., & Gilliland, S. W. (2007). The management of organi-

zational justice. Academy of Management Perspectives, 21(4), 34-48.

Crosby, B. C., & Bryson, J. M. (2005). Leadership for the common good: Tackling

public problems in a shared-power world. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Currall, S. C. (1992). Group representatives in educational institutions: An empirical

study of superintendents and teacher union presidents. The Journal of Applied

Behavioral Science, 28, 296-317.

Dahl, R. A. (1957). The concept of power. Systems Research and Behavioral Science,

2, 201-215.

Das, T. K., & Teng, B. S. (1998). Between trust and control: Developing confidence

in partner cooperation in alliances. Academy of Management Review, 23, 491-

512.

Dawson, S. (1996). Analyzing organizations. London, England: Macmillan Business.

De Cremer, D., & Van Vugt, M. (1998). Collective identity and cooperation in a pub-

lic goods dilemma: A matter of trust or self-efficacy. Current Research in Social

Psychology, 3(1), 1-11.

De Wever, S., Martens, R., & Vandenbempt, K. (2005). The impact of trust on stra-

tegic resource acquisition through interorganizational networks: Towards a con-

ceptual model. Human Relations, 58, 1523-1543.

Dyer, J. H., & Chu, W. (2000). The determinants of trust in supplier-automaker rela-

tionships in the US, Japan and Korea. Journal of International Business Studies,

31, 259-285.

Edelenbos, J., & Klijn, E. H. (2007). Trust in complex decision-making networks: A

theoretical and empirical exploration. Administration & Society, 39(1), 25-50.

Ehler, C. N. (2003). Indicators to measure governance performance in integrated

coastal management. Ocean & Coastal Management, 46, 335-345.

Emerson, K., Nabatchi, T., & Balogh, S. (2012). An integrative framework for col-

laborative governance. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory,

22(1), 1-29.

Emerson, R. M. (1962). Power-dependence relations. American Sociological Review,

27(1), 31-41.

Fedor, D. B., & Ramsay, R. J. (2007). Effects of supervisor power on preparers’

responses to audit review: A field study. Behavioral Research in Accounting,

19, 91-105.

French, J. R., & Raven, B. (1959). The bases of social power. In D. Cartwright (Ed.),

Studies in social power (pp. 151-157). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Frost, T. F., & Moussavi, F. (1992). The relationship between leader power base and

influence: The moderating role of trust. Journal of Applied Business Research,

8(4), 9-14.

Galinsky, A. D., Magee, J. C., Inesi, M. E., & Gruenfeld, D. H. (2006). Power and

perspectives not taken. Psychological Science, 17, 1068-1074.

Geringer, J. M., & Hebert, L. (1989). Control and performance of international joint

ventures. Journal of International Business Studies, 20, 235-254.

26 Administration & Society 00(0)

Gray, B. (1985). Conditions facilitating interorganizational collaboration. Human

Relations, 38, 911-936.

Gray, B. (1989). Collaborating: Finding common ground for multiparty problems.

San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Gray, B. (1996). Cross-sectoral partners: Collaborative alliances among business,

government and communities. In C. Huxham (Ed.), Creating collaborative

advantage (pp. 57-79). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Greenberg, J. (1987). A taxonomy of organizational justice theories. Academy of

Management Review, 12(1), 9-22.

Grimes, A. J. (1978). Authority, power, influence and social control: A theoretical

synthesis. Academy of Management Review, 3, 724-735.

Gulati, R. (1995). Does familiarity breed trust? The implications of repeated ties for

contractual choice in alliances. Academy of Management Journal, 38, 85-112.

Gulati, R., & Nickerson, J. A. (2008). Interorganizational trust, governance choice,

and exchange performance. Organization Science, 19, 688-708.

Hardy, C., & Phillips, N. (1998). Strategies of engagement: Lessons from the criti-

cal examination of collaboration and conflict in an interorganizational domain.

Organization Science, 9, 217-230.

Hardy, C., Phillips, N., & Lawrence, T. (1998). Distinguishing trust and power in

interorganizational relations: Forms and façades of trust. In C. Lane & R.

Bachmann (Eds.), Trust within and between organizations: Conceptual issues

and empirical applications (pp. 64-87). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Heide, J. B., & John, G. (1992). Do norms matter in marketing relationships? Journal

of Marketing, 56(2), 32-44.

Henneman, E. A., Lee, J. L., & Cohen, J. I. (1995). Collaboration: A concept analysis.

Journal of Advanced Nursing, 21, 103-109.

Hosmer, L. T. (1995). Trust: The connecting link between organizational theory and

philosophical ethics. Academy of Management Review, 20, 379-403.

Hough, M., Jackson, J., Bradford, B., Myhill, A., & Quinton, P. (2010). Procedural

justice, trust, and institutional legitimacy. Policing: A Journal of Policy and

Practice, 4, 203-210.

Hunt, S. D., & Nevin, J. R. (1974). Power in a channel of distribution: Sources and

consequences. Journal of Marketing Research, 11, 186-193.

Huxham, C. (1996). Collaboration and collaborative advantage. In C. Huxham (Ed.),

Creating collaborative advantage (pp. 1-18). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Huxham, C. (2003). Theorizing collaboration practice. Public Management Review,

5, 401-423.

Huxham, C., & Beech, N. (2008). Inter-organizational power. In S. Cropper (Ed.),

The Oxford handbook of inter-organizational relations (pp. 555-579). Oxford,

UK: Oxford University Press.

Huxham, C., & Vangen, S. (2000). Leadership in the shaping and implementation

of collaboration agendas: How things happen in a (not quite) joined-up world.

Academy of Management Journal, 43, 1159-1175.

Huxham, C., & Vangen, S. (2005). Managing to collaborate: The theory and practice

of collaborative advantage. London, England: Routledge.

Ran and Qi 27

Huxham, C., Vangen, S., Huxham, C., & Eden, C. (2000). The challenge of collabora-

tive governance. Public Management: An International Journal of Research and

Theory, 2, 337-358.

Inkpen, A. C., & Currall, S. C. (1998). The nature, antecedents, and consequences of

joint venture trust. Journal of International Management, 4(1), 1-20.

Inkpen, A. C., & Currall, S. C. (2004). The coevolution of trust, control, and learning

in joint ventures. Organization Science, 15, 586-599.

Ireland, R. D., & Webb, J. W. (2007). A multi-theoretic perspective on trust and power

in strategic supply chains. Journal of Operations Management, 25, 482-497.

Janis, I. L. (1972). Victims of groupthink: A psychological study of Foreign-policy

decisions and fiascoes. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

Janowicz-Panjaitan, M., & Krishnan, R. (2009). Measures for dealing with compe-

tence and integrity violations of interorganizational trust at the corporate and

operating levels of organizational hierarchy. Journal of Management Studies, 46,

245-268.

Jeffries, F. L., & Reed, R. (2000). Trust and adaptation in relational contracting.

Academy of Management Review, 25, 873-882.

Jentoft, S., van Son, T. C., & Bjørkan, M. (2007). Marine protected areas: A gover-

nance system analysis. Human Ecology, 35, 611-622.

Johnston, D. A., McCutcheon, D. M., Stuart, F. I., & Kerwood, H. (2004). Effects of

supplier trust on performance of cooperative supplier relationships. Journal of

Operations Management, 22(1), 23-38.

Kay, F. M., & Hagan, J. (2003). Building trust: Social capital, distributive justice, and

loyalty to the firm. Law & Social Inquiry, 28, 483-519.

Kern, H. (2000). Lack of trust, surfeit of trust: Some causes of the innovation crisis

in German industry. In C. Lane & R. Bachman (Eds.), Trust within and between

organizations: Conceptual issues and empirical applications (pp. 31-63). New

York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Kipnis, D. (1976). The power holders. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

Korsgaard, M. A., Schweiger, D. M., & Sapienza, H. J. (1995). Building commitment,

attachment, and trust in strategic decision-making teams: The role of procedural

justice. Academy of Management Journal, 38, 60-84.

Kramer, R. M. (1993). Cooperation and organizational identification. In J. K.

Murnighan (Ed.), Social psychology in organizations: Advances in theory and

research (pp. 244-268). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Kroeger, F. (2012). Trusting organizations: The institutionalization of trust in interor-

ganizational relationships. Organization, 19, 743-763.

Kumar, N. (1996). The power of trust in manufacturer-retailer relationships. Harvard

Business Review, 74, 92-106.

Larson, A. (1992). Network dyads in entrepreneurial settings: A study of the gover-

nance of exchange relationships. Administrative Science Quarterly, 37, 76-104.

Lewis, J. D., & Weigert, A. (1985). Trust as a social reality. Social Forces, 63, 967-

985.

Linder, S. H. (1999). Coming to terms with the public-private partnership: A grammar

of multiple meanings. American Behavioral Scientist, 43(1), 35-51.

28 Administration & Society 00(0)

Lister, S. (2000). Power in partnership? An analysis of an NGO’s relationships with

its partners. Journal of International Development, 12, 227-239.

Luhmann, N. (1979). Trust and power: Two works. Chichester, UK: Wiley.

Lukes, S. (1974). Power: A radical view. Hampshire, UK: Macmillan.

Lusch, R. F., & Brown, J. R. (1982). A modified model of power in the marketing

channel. Journal of Marketing Research, 312-323.

Lyon, F. (2006). Managing co-operation: Trust and power in Ghanaian associations.

Organization Studies, 27(1), 31-52.

Mandell, M. P. (2001). Collaboration through network structures for community

building efforts. National Civic Review, 90, 279-288.

Mayer, R. C., Davis, J. H., & Schoorman, F. D. (1995). An integrative model of orga-

nizational trust. Academy of Management Review, 20, 709-734.

Mayer, R. C., & Gavin, M. B. (2005). Trust in management and performance: Who

minds the shop while the employees watch the boss? Academy of Management

Journal, 48, 874-888.

McAllister, D. J. (1995). Affect-and cognition-based trust as foundations for inter-

personal cooperation in organizations. Academy of Management Journal, 38(1),

24-59.

McGuire, M. (2006). Collaborative public management: Assessing what we know

and how we know it. Public Administration Review, 66(Suppl. 1), 33-43.

Merchant, K. A. (1985). Control in business organizations. Boston, MA: Pitman

Publishing.

Molm, L. D. (1997). Risk and power use: Constraints on the use of coercion in

exchange. American Sociological Review, 62, 113-133.

Nicholson, C. Y., Compeau, L. D., & Sethi, R. (2001). The role of interpersonal liking

in building trust in long-term channel relationships. Journal of the Academy of

Marketing Science, 29(1), 3-15.

Nooteboom, B., Berger, H., & Noorderhaven, N. G. (1997). Effects of trust and gov-

ernance on relational risk. Academy of Management Journal, 40, 308-338.

Oh, Y., & Bush, C. B. (2016). Exploring the role of dynamic social capital in collab-

orative governance. Administration & Society, 48, 216-236.

Oliver, A. L. (1997). On the nexus of organizations and professions: Networking

through trust. Sociological Inquiry, 67, 227-245.

Oliver, C. (1990). Determinants of interorganizational relationships: Integration and

future directions. Academy of Management Review, 15, 241-265.

Ouchi, W. G. (1980). Markets, bureaucracies, and clans. Administrative Science

Quarterly, 25, 129-141.

Phillips, N., Lawrence, T. B., & Hardy, C. (2004). Discourse and institutions.

Academy of Management Review, 29, 635-652.

Provan, K. G., & Milward, H. B. (2001). Do networks really work? A framework for

evaluating public-sector organizational networks. Public Administration Review,

61, 414-423.

Purdy, J. M. (2012). A framework for assessing power in collaborative governance

processes. Public Administration Review, 72, 409-417.

Ran and Qi 29

Ran, B., & Qi, H. (2016). Issues and challenges of public service procurement in

China: A collaborative governance perspective. International Journal of Public

Policy, 12, 339-358.

Ran, B., & Qi, H. (2017). Contingencies of power sharing in collaborative gover-

nance. The American Review of Public Administration. Advance online publica-

tion. doi:10.1177/0275074017745355

Reed, M. I. (2001). Organization, trust and control: A realist analysis. Organization

Studies, 22, 201-228.

Ring, P. S. (1997). Processes facilitating reliance on trust in inter-organizational net-

works. In M. Ebers (Ed.), The formation of inter-organizational networks (pp.

114-145). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Ring, P. S., & Van de Ven, A. H. (1992). Structuring cooperative relationships

between organizations. Strategic Management Journal, 13, 483-498.

Ring, P. S., & Van de Ven, A. H. (1994). Developmental processes of cooperative

interorganizational relationships. Academy of Management Review, 19, 90-118.

Rogers, E., & Weber, E. P. (2010). Thinking harder about outcomes for collaborative

governance arrangements. The American Review of Public Administration, 40,

546-567.

Rousseau, D. M., Sitkin, S. B., Burt, R. S., & Camerer, C. (1998). Not so different

after all: A cross-discipline view of trust. Academy of Management Review, 23,

393-404.

Saz-Carranza, A., Salvador Iborra, S., & Albareda, A. (2016). The power dynamics of

mandated network administrative organizations. Public Administration Review,

76, 449-462.

Seidl, D., Sanderson, P., & Roberts, J. (2013). Applying the “comply-or-explain”

principle: Discursive legitimacy tactics with regard to codes of corporate gover-

nance. Journal of Management & Governance, 17, 791-826.

Steffek, J. (2009). Discursive legitimation in environmental governance. Forest

Policy and Economics, 11, 313-318.

Suchman, M. C. (1995). Managing legitimacy: Strategic and institutional approaches.

Academy of Management Review, 20, 571-610.

Sydow, J. (1998). Understanding the constitution of interorganizational trust. In C. Lane

& R. Bachman (Eds.), Trust within and between organizations: Conceptual issues

and empirical applications (pp. 31-63). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Thomson, A. M. (2001). Collaboration: Meaning and measurement (Doctoral dis-

sertation). Indiana University, Bloomington.

Thomson, A. M., & Perry, J. L. (2006). Collaboration processes: Inside the black box.

Public Administration Review, 66(Suppl. 1), 20-32.

Vangen, S., & Huxham, C. (1998, July). The role of trust in the achievement of collab-

orative advantage. Paper presented at the 14th EGOS Colloquium, Maastricht,

The Netherlands.

Vangen, S., & Huxham, C. (2003). Nurturing collaborative relations: Building trust

in interorganizational collaboration. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science,

39(1), 5-31.

30 Administration & Society 00(0)

Van Oortmerssen, L. A., van Woerkum, C. M., & Aarts, N. (2014). The visibility of

trust: Exploring the connection between trust and interaction in a Dutch collab-

orative governance boardroom. Public Management Review, 16, 666-685.

Wahl, I., Kastlunger, B., & Kirchler, E. (2010). Trust in authorities and power

to enforce tax compliance: An empirical analysis of the “Slippery Slope

Framework.” Law & Policy, 32, 383-406.

Weick, K. (1995). Sensemaking in Organisations. London, England: SAGE.

Williams, M. (2001). In whom we trust: Group membership as an affective context

for trust development. Academy of Management Review, 26, 377-396.

Williamson, O. E. (1993). Calculativeness, trust, and economic organization. The

Journal of Law and Economics, 36, 453-486.

Wood, D. J., & Gray, B. (1991). Toward a comprehensive theory of collaboration.

The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 27, 139-162.

Yeung, J. H. Y., Selen, W., Zhang, M., & Huo, B. (2009). The effects of trust and

coercive power on supplier integration. International Journal of Production

Economics, 120, 66-78.

Zaheer, A., McEvily, B., & Perrone, V. (1998). Does trust matter? Exploring the effects

of interorganizational and interpersonal trust on performance. Organization

Science, 9, 141-159.

Zand, D. E. (1972). Trust and managerial problem solving. Administrative Science

Quarterly, 17, 229-239.

Author Biographies

Bing Ran is an associate professor of public administration in the School of Public

Affairs, Penn State Harrisburg. His research interests focus on the dynamic interac-

tions between society’s complex infrastructure and human behavior, tackling topics

such as collaborative governance networks, organizational identity, knowledge inte-

gration, social entrepreneurship, and hybrid organizations.

Huiting Qi is a doctoral candidate in the School of Public Affairs, Penn State

Harrisburg. Her research interests include collaborative governance networks, behav-

ioral public administration, and organizational theory.