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The trustors’ psychological alignment with the trustee is therefore the third aspect of trust-building that I consider (See DeConinck, 2011 for a discussion of alignment and trust). According to Dietz and Gillespie’s (2012: 1032) organisational- level study of trust, ‘if between equitable partners the trustors’ judgement of the trustee is positive and values are aligned this will increase the willingness of the trustor to take a risk in dealings with the trustee and ultimately to place trust in them’. Identity-based trust is 'socially oriented trust' (Zuppa, Olbina & Issa, 2016: 91) and ‘rests on shared values or close personal ties’ (Dunn & Schweitzer, 2005: 81) between individuals representing the organisations highlighting again the role of the individual and the organisation in shaping and forming perceptions of trust. Between individuals, this might be demonstrated through acts such as gift-exchange (Baviera, English & Guillén, 2016) or between organisations through face time (See Kroeger, 2012). Interpersonal and organisational identification-based trust goes beyond the actions of the individuals or the knowledge that the trustor can gain about the trustee. Identification based trust therefore is highly idiosyncratic (Ho, Kuo & Lin, 2012), relying on the past experiences of the trustor, or for instance expectations that are rooted in diffuse and uncodified structures in the external environment that shape and give reason for the trustor to trust the trustee.

Values are therefore an important aspect of identification-based trust. Unlike ability or knowledge-based trust, identification-based trust involves a cognitive ‘leap of faith’ (Möllering, 2001: 934) that the trustor takes which goes beyond basing their trust simply on an assessment of the abilities or knowledge about the trustee, but on the perception of shared values. A trustee might demonstrate ability to undertake a task to engender trust in the trustor or knowledge may be gained about the trustee that might enable the trustor to place trust in the trustee. However, identification- based trust requires an alignment of values that goes beyond simply the abilities of the trustee regardless of their competence in a specific domain (Gillespie & Mann, 2004) and the trustor might trust the trustee despite accepting that the actions and knowledge gathered do not necessarily provide an obvious reason for the trustor to trust the trustee.

The ‘leap of faith’ (Möllering, 2001: 934) that the trustor must take means that trust based on identification with the trustee is a decision normally instigated by the trustor (Möllering, 2001, 2006), indicating once again that trust-building is not always in the hands of the trustee but in the ‘eye of the beholder’ (Möllering, 2002:

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786) and identification based trust places the trustor in a position of alignment with the trustee.

The trustor’s position of alignment with the trustee helps distinguish the process of identification-based trust from ability and knowledge-based trust. Since Identification-based trust appears to demonstrate alignment between the trusting parties it is often contrasted to ‘skepticism, impartiality, exigency [and] opportunism’ (Stevens, MacDuffe & Helper, 2015: 1). McAllister’s (1995) study of 194 managers and professionals proved this at the inter-personal level. The study concluded that interpersonal cooperation within organisations is often based on identification, and that the role of alignment in identification-based trust plays a ‘crucial role in the creation and maintenance of trusting relations in the face of uncertainty about trustworthiness’ (Ibid.: 334).

Rempel, Holmes and Zanna (1985) focused their study at more intimate level. Instead of investigating the interactions between colleagues, they interviewed forty-two Canadian couples. Rempel and colleagues concluded that trust was “closely tied to feelings of identification and the attribution of intrinsic motivation to both self and partner” (Rempel et al., 1985: 101) [my emphasis added]. Therefore,

identification-based trust is something – even between married couples – that requires the attribution of certain qualities the trustor determines for themselves about the ability and motivations of the trustee, but the ‘leap of faith’ is not a rational construction of the former. Rather identification-based trust for the individual trustor ‘is a state of mind’ (Das and Teng, 2001: 254) of the trustor.

Having said this, the trust must to some degree be warranted by the trustees’ actions (Bhattacharya & Devinney, 1998) and this will likely involve a period of identification with their values and their motivations, which are demonstrated to an extent by the actions of the trustee (Lewicki & Bunker, 1996) and knowledge about the trustee which may lead to a decision on the part of the trustor to align themselves with the trustees situation, but the precise reason for the trustor’s decision to place identification-based trust in the trustee remains elusive. The literature simply acknowledges that at some point identification-based trust may develop (Mayer et al., 1995).

However, the description of identification-based trust in the interpersonal literature is useful in a study of interorganisational trust as it indicates that where identification-based trusting is taking place there is a commitment to the individual or the organisation rather than simply the function they perform (Buchan & Croson,

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2004). The individual becomes the focus of the trustees’ trust rather than the expected outputs. This presents an insight that may be observable in the behaviours or actions of the trustor and trustee: for instance, trustors will likely be more tolerant of trustees’ mistakes (Costa, 2003) and therefore one would expect to see less adversarial behaviour between individuals (Crisp & Jarvenpaa, 2013) because the basis of the trust is on the relationship between the trustee and trustor, not simply the delivery of an agreed output by the trustee.

What is not clear in an interorganisational environment is how values might be collectively considered and shared. Identification-based trust in an interorganisational environment is likely to demonstrate that the organisations will depend on the other and behave in a manner acceptable to all parties without the need for formal legal arrangements but what might be acceptable to one party may well be unacceptable to other parties, however what may be a consideration is the practical resource-saving value of collective alignment and a form of collective identification-based trust as actors realise that the resources (i.e. time and money) that are saved outweigh the risk of closely monitoring the multiple relationships through knowledge gathering or measuring the specific outputs (Sitkin, Burt & Camerer, 1998).