Leadership roles absorb uncertainty only through advance trust granted before outcomes appear

Evidence

Despite every effort of organization and rational planning, it is impossible for all actions to be guided by means of reliable forecasts of their consequences. There remain uncertainties to be accommodated and there must exist roles whose special task this is. Roles such as the politician’s or the managing director’s, for example, are typically monitored in terms of successful outcomes rather than of measurable standards, precisely because the correct action cannot be identified in sufficient detail in advance. But success – if it appears at all – does not appear till after the action, while there must be commitment beforehand. This problem of time is bridged through the trust that is granted as an advance on success and on cancellation, for example, through the appointment of people to public office, through loans of capital, and such like. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 149

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: This is institutional trust as ‘faceless commitment’ — the reader absorbs authority on an advance of confidence in the role/system rather than personal verification of the office-holder. Directly mappable onto Giddens’s expert systems and onto Stevens’s precommitted deference to Darlington’s lordship.
• DEFINE: Defines how roles like politician/managing director are structurally insulated from evaluation — monitored by outcomes, not process — which is how an institution can lack moral grounding yet still command trust.