How to create trust quickly: a comparative empirical investigation of the bases of swift trust

Abstract Swift trust has long been considered of critical importance to the work of project teams and other forms of temporary organizing, but research has remained heavily fragmented in regard to its antecedents or bases. This contribution conducts a systematic review of the literature and derives from it seven possible bases of swift trust. The relative significance of each of these bases is tested through a survey of 172 project managers. Its findings allow for the distillation of the bases of swift trust into three coherent thematic blocks of different significance in the creation of swift trust. Bases related to team composition exert the strongest effects, whereas reputational and institutional information demonstrates much more limited effects, and action-related bases of swift trust are shown to be largely irrelevant. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the formation of swift trust and resolve existing tensions found in the literature.