Third Study

Abstract

The previous chapter applied the theoretical model of situational trust development proposed in Chapter 3 and the model of cooperation proposed in Chapter 5 to a participant observation study of a small management consultancy business. This was in order to provide a meaningful understanding of a number of scenarios taken from the study by application of the models, and thereby assess their utility as interpretive frameworks. A number of illustrations of different types of trust were provided, along with their interaction with individual cooperation thresholds and, as a result, indicative ‘answers’ to the research questions proposed in Chapter 3 that remained unanswered following the first study discussed in Chapter 4 were also provided. As such, the main purpose of the research reported in this book has been achieved: namely, to arrive at an understanding of the occurrence and role of interpersonal trust in the enrepreneurial venture by means of a qualitative exploration of a number of enrepreneurial ventures and commonly occurring scenarios within them, structured by the attempt to provide answers to a set of 15 research questions derived from a review of appropriate literatures and the development of a workable theoretical model.

Philosophy is at once general and concrete, critical and appreciative of direct intuition.

It should not be a ferocious debate between irritable professors.

It is a survey of possibilities and their comparison with actualities.

Alfred North Whitehead ([1933] 1961)