Published
Methodology
Interview study with 52 senior leaders across nine countries, analysed thematically
Co-Authors
Dr. Ingrid Solberg
Paper Length
30 pages
Cite as
Ellery, J., & Solberg, I. (2026). Trust as infrastructure: Practices of pre-emptive credibility. Leadership Quarterly Papers, 14(1), 9–38.
Copy citation
Trust is usually discussed as a matter of culture, which makes it difficult to manage. This study treats trust as infrastructure that carries decisions, and identifies the specific practices senior leaders use to build capacity before they need it.
Trust as an operating asset
Fifty-two senior leaders across nine countries described trust in operational terms: how much evidence a decision needs, how many approvals it collects, how quickly bad news travels upward. Treated that way, trust behaves like capacity rather than sentiment.
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Where trust is low, organisations pay for it in process. The cost is real, recurring, and almost never recorded as such.
The visible price
Low-trust environments carried roughly twice the approval steps and three times the reporting volume of high-trust peers pursuing comparable work. The controls were rational responses to a deficit nobody had named.
How it was rebuilt
Recovery followed a narrow pattern: one commitment made publicly, kept visibly, and repeated. Leaders who tried to rebuild trust through communication alone showed no measurable change at eighteen months.
