A pragmatic contribution for a more reflexive institution-based trust

This paper presents a philosophical reflection on the concept of trust in order to promote a pragmatic reflexivity in institutionalist theory. The objective of this article is to indicate why the best way to deal with trust issues is to reflexively balance their rational and routine origins. Understood as an individualist effort for the rational action theory, such reflexive requirement nevertheless asks for a complex interrogation of the nature of the intersubjectivity at stake. To fully understand the sources and the mechanisms of institution-based trust requires taking into account the peculiar bond that actors have with their own institutional framing as a condition of stability of their common-sense world. People rely on institutions to interact on daily basis and reflexivity is the mechanism that operates the equilibrium between individual reason and institutional routine. Neoinstitutionalist approaches in organisational theory are often understood as having integrated such modality. We believe on the contrary that they have not sufficiently taken into account the reflexive requirement where a pragmatic understanding of institutional trust does. Our contribution calls then for a research methodology based on scientific humility and for the definition of pluralist and experimental collective action principles.