When trust is not enough: how organisations can deal with stakeholder mistrust

Why stakeholder relationships are under pressure today

Today, companies are facing major strategic challenges at increasingly shorter intervals. Geopolitical tensions, economic interests and societal value conflicts are becoming ever more intertwined. At the beginning of the year, the World Economic Forum demonstrated just how significantly companies worldwide are affected by geopolitical uncertainties – for example, through tariff measures or competition for scarce resources such as rare earths.

At the same time, societal debates on issues such as climate change, migration or equality are intensifying the polarisation of values. In such an environment, it becomes increasingly difficult for organisations to build stable and trusting relationships with their stakeholders. Instead of trust, collaboration is often characterised by vigilance or even mistrust.

This is precisely why it is crucial for organisations to understand the differences between trust, vigilance and mistrust, and how collaboration can succeed in these various types of relationships.

This question is addressed in a recently published research article by Antoinette Weibel (HSG), Tiziana Gaito (HWZ), Simon Schafheitle (University of Twente), and Sybille Sachs (HWZ). The researchers demonstrate how the three distinct psychological relationship states—trust, vigilance, and distrust—can be identified, and how organisations can remain capable of taking action in each of these scenarios.

Trust, vigilance and mistrust: three distinct states of relationship

While trust expresses a voluntary willingness to make oneself vulnerable because one has positive expectations of the other party, mistrust is a collective defensive attitude. One actively closes oneself off, assuming that the other person harbours malicious intentions and will exploit one's vulnerability. The crucial difference lies in the motive: a mere lack of trust (or low trust) often arises when one simply doubts a stakeholder’s abilities or reliability.

A lack of competence usually leads to nothing more than low levels of trust. Distrust only arises when malicious intent is suspected. This can be particularly pronounced if the other person is also considered highly competent, as there is a fear that they may deliberately use their abilities to cause harm.

When mistrust arises

Mistrust towards an organisation tends to become entrenched particularly when stakeholders perceive its values as entirely opposed to their own, or its intentions as dangerous. A lack of alignment in values is often evident in a profound contradiction between what a company promises externally and what it actually practises internally. For example, a business that publicly promotes mental health, yet undermines these very values internally through extreme performance pressure.

There is also the perception of malice, meaning the suspicion that an organisation is ruthlessly pursuing its own objectives and is even willing to actively harm others in the process. This can be seen, for example, in the case of cloud service providers who are suspected of recklessly passing on sensitive customer data to interested parties in order to protect their own interests.

In both cases, this feeling leads to attributing fundamentally malicious intentions to the organisation and adopting a defensive, self-protective stance.

Once these negative characteristics come to dominate perception, a threshold is crossed at which mere vigilance turns into a deeply entrenched defensive mode. At its core, mistrust means that an organisation is entirely unwilling to engage in situations where it might be vulnerable. This defensive mode is based on a profound conviction that the other party harbours malicious intent, which stakeholders interpret as a direct warning signal: they assume that their partner will actively exploit any vulnerability in the relationship in order to cause them harm.

When mistrust prevails, stakeholders become defensive, refuse any form of cooperation, or even go on the offensive, which ultimately destroys the relationship and can result in severe financial and social losses.

Vigilance: The transitional phase between trust and mistrust

However, before a relationship ultimately shifts into this rigid defensive mode, it usually passes through an uncertain transitional phase known as “vigilance”. Vigilance acts as an unstable grey area and forms the crucial intermediary stage between the “bright side” of trust and the “dark side” of mistrust. In this state, judgement about the other party is temporarily suspended, as both positive and negative intentions are considered possible at the same time.

As this state of doubt is mentally very demanding, this transitional phase soon resolves itself in one direction or the other: either one finds confirmation of good intentions and returns to a position of trust, or, if further negative signals arise, the situation shifts irreversibly into a state of deep-seated mistrust.

Vigilance is an important early warning mechanism: perceived signs of mistrust are often based on uncertainty and not always on an actual intention to cause harm. An early, clarifying conversation can help to dispel doubts and reopen the path to a foundation of trust.

What companies can do in practical terms

The practical application of these insights is crucial for successful collaboration between the organisation and its internal stakeholders, such as employees, as well as external stakeholders, including suppliers, customers, and NGOs. On the one hand, the organisation as a whole is responsible for striving to build trust, while also taking signs of vigilance or even mistrust seriously. Since mistrust can often spread rapidly from isolated incidents to become widespread, it is important to raise awareness among all managers and employees regarding the symptoms of vigilance and mistrust.

This necessitates further training on the various psychological aspects of relationships when working with stakeholders. In addition, peer supervision groups, where case studies and good practices are shared, can be beneficial. It is also important to be open to seeking external support at an early stage. The case studies in the research have shown that when both conflicts of interest and value tensions become too great and mistrust prevails, professional mediation—accepted by all parties involved—can help to defuse and neutralise the situation.

For a long time, collaboration with stakeholders focused almost exclusively on building trust. However, it is now clear that organisations can also take a stakeholder-oriented approach to actively managing mistrust, enabling them to identify conflicts at an early stage and prevent escalation.

Research on the topic of mistrust at HWZ

Under the leadership of Sybille Sachs (HWZ) and Antoinette Weibel (HSG), an SNSF project on the topic of “Difficult Relationships and Distrust” was carried out over a period of five years. During this time, two doctoral theses were completed at HWZ in cooperation with HSG: Daniel Laude developed indices for measuring the quality of stakeholder relationships. Tiziana Gaito developed a methodology for addressing and resolving seemingly intractable relationship conflicts. These findings are now being incorporated into various undergraduate and continuing education programmes.

• On Daniel Laude's dissertation
• On the dissertation of Tiziana Gaito
• On the study on mistrust in stakeholder relationships by Weibel, Gaito, Schafheitle and Sachs

Conclusion: Trust alone is not always enough

Today, organisations must not only build trust, but also learn to deal constructively with vigilance and mistrust. Those who recognise early on the state of their stakeholders’ relationships are better able to manage conflicts and prevent escalation.

The following further education programmes may be helpful:

• 

  Seminar Erfolgreich(er) kommunizieren HWZ

  Duration 1 Tag
• 

  Seminar Konflikte souverän lösen HWZ

  Duration 1 Tag
• 

  Seminar Erfolgreich verhandeln HWZ

  Duration 1 Tag