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The Control of TrustControllingTrust in ControlTrustingForming of TrustBetrayal of TrustTesting TrustCircular CausalityComplexityComplexity Reduction and OrganisationGuiding Process Interaction PatternsGuiding Process Social ComplexitySelf Stabilisation of Social Complexity

Self Stabilisation of Social Complexity

In all guiding processes, patterns develop in order to relieve the respective systems. With regard to trust and control, what impresses is that these patterns, in organisations, are formed with exceptional speed and create exceptional stability. Trust calls for trust, control calls for counter-control.

The latter was formulated like this by Luhmann: Supervision of the subordinate will be responded to by the bottom-up supervision of the supervisor. And one suspects that the subordinates often have more clout, because they can overburden the supervisor with so many decisions that he voluntarily controls less, or they overload him with so much information, or mislead with partial information, so that control is lost. Once mistrust has entered the system, it cannot simply be changed back to trust (One lie can spoil a thousand truths!).

Conversely, offering trust (in organisations) will more likely engender trust. Both sides are relieved and strengthened in their procedures. The circle of trust also stabilises, because nobody likes admitting that they were wrong in their willingness to trust. In this way, disturbances in the field of trust are usually filtered out over the longer term.