Institutional trust can rest on role design rather than individual knowledge.

Evidence

A somewhat less demanding account of trust could allow us to unpack our trust of an institution in two ways. First, we could be confident that every individual in the organization, each in the relevant ways, would do what each must do if the organization is to fulfill our trust. Second, we could be confident that the design of the roles and their related incentives will get role holders to do what they must do if the organization is to fulfill our trust. In this case, the individual role holders might be broadly interchangeable, and we need know few if any of them. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 718

Categorization

• XREF: This two-way unpacking of institutional trust parallels how the doctor’s wife in Blindness relies on roles and obligations — the medication line, food rationing — rather than on knowing the blinded individuals personally.