The value of trust in project business

The paper works towards establishing value for trust in project business, particularly the financial value of trust to project business. Concepts of trust are revisited. Rational explanations of trust are shown wanting, calculations of trust and danger being misrepresentations of how the willingness to trust is formed. The paper argues for the need to establish the interpretative and socially constructed nature of trust, primarily based upon prior experiential and psycho-motive learning in relation to current situational factors. Trust and its relationship to forming expectations and generating confidence are considered. Empirical findings are mobilised to show how trust contributed to value in a financial sense. Value is not an absolute in this context for value is empirically and theoretically shown to relate directly to expectations. Value is defined as an asset and is thus part of social capital for projects and in embedded in firms.