Building trust costs firms real resources, but distrust costs more.

Evidence

Firstly, it indicates that promoting trust is costly. In addition to the time it takes to establish a personal rapport between client and subcontractor, it involves a set of policies referred to as partnership. Client firms offer substantial guarantees on the level of orders and prices in exchange for improved performance on quality and delivery. Secondly, it demonstrates that while trust is costly, lack of trust is more costly still. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2633

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘trust is costly but distrust more costly’ tradeoff mirrors the Hardin account of trust as observable constraint — building observable constraints has overhead but pays off. — connects to: Listed firms’ value depends on sustained investor relationship building. — Kean Birch, Rethinking Value in the Bio-economy:…, 101
• CANDY: A clean, quotable inversion: trust is expensive, but its absence is worse — the Lyons machinery subcontractor finding.