Trust and Distrust in Conflicting Situations: Legal Case Review of Antecedents of Distrust

It is considered that the root cause of a conflicting situation is trust and distrust relationships. To pursue effective negotiations, trust must be built and distrust managed. In the past 10 years, a lot has been studied about trust, but not much has been written about distrust. This paper uses a case study approach to examine the antecedents, behaviors, and consequences in 10 legal cases in Hong Kong, where distrust is generally regarded as the root cause of the problem in the cases. The findings have identified that when people do not want to meet, company affairs or meetings cannot be continued, and when there is a doubt of personal misconduct, there is a clear signal of distrust. Thus, distrust leads to steps taken to reduce our vulnerability in an attempt to protect our interests, such as winding up of a company. In a negotiation, certain procedural facilities and steps should be considered and taken beforehand to disallow the conflict to escalate into a matter that can only be resolved by arbitration or litigation. These cases lay a foundation for managing relationships in formulating a negotiating procedure by identifying the sources of distrust to enable a more effective negotiation. (C) 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.