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In a way, everything in our society depends on trust (Gibbs & Coleman, 1990). Every currency in the world holds value because people believe that their central bank will back it up (Varian, 2019). Democracies work because citizens believe that they have individual rights and that their country’s justice system treats everyone fairly (Castillo, Huang & Silver, 2019). The financial markets depend upon stakeholders' trust in various institutions; if investors lose faith in a company, no matter how strong the fundamentals, the company stock will start plummeting (Pevzner, Xie & Xin, 2012).
Trust is the deep-rooted adhesive that holds our economies together and prevents them from falling apart (Knack & Keefer, 1997). As our literature review suggests, trust is known to be the foundation of all relationships (Simmel et al., 1978). Moreover, when we talk about relationships, we not only mean interpersonal relations that we have with our friends and family but a wide range of relationships. As explained by Kong (2012), trust is bifurcated into two categories based on the parties involved in interactions. First, interpersonal or social trust and second, institutional trust. Interpersonal trust as the definition implies usually involves trust between individuals (Helliwell, 2003). Various factors affect the level of trust between these individuals, which has been talked about in our literature review. Institutional Trust, on the other hand, may usually involve trust between an institution and an individual or another institution. Banks, governments, organizations, companies and similar establishments may be categorized as institutions when talking about institutional trust.
Even though the two categories are different in nature, that does not imply they are independent of each other (Nooteboom, 2006). Peoples' trust in a person or an institution can very well be affected by each other. A person may vote for a particular candidate in an election because they identify with his/her party rather than evaluating the policies and ideas of the candidate himself (Krosnick, 2017). Trust between individuals and institutions is inherently linked to each other (Helliwell, 2003). Moreover, various factors determine our trust in one another. These factors range from, the extent of relationships itself to cultural factors like race, country of residence etc., all of which have been discussed in detail later in the paper.
Our case study mainly explores a recent incident involving the American tech-giant Apple Inc. and its face-off with the US Government's domestic law enforcement agency, FBI or the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The face-off was a result of Apple's unwillingness to abide by a court order delivered by a US federal judge. The order urged Apple to assist the FBI in developing a new operating system, that would let the FBI retrieve data from the iPhone of an identified shooter. The later sections of this paper talk in-depth on how the whole situation played out and what exactly were the arguments of both sides. The incident stirred an international conversation about privacy and trust while asking the crucial question of whether the government should have such kind of power. This particular case was chosen because it gave several critical contributions to the conversation of trust in an institutional setting. Apple's argument is especially intriguing, because even in such a complicated situation, it tries to fight for the trust it has cultivated over the years in its customers, and tries to establish why it was right in its refusal to develop a technology that it claims would have put every iPhone user at risk and damaged people's trust in the company because of the same. Various notable individuals like Edward Snowden and Sundar Pichai weighed in on the incident defending Apple's stance. The paper also talks about how Apple was different from other tech-based companies and why it was especially essential for them to fight for what they did. Later on, in the findings section, the paper presents the two main findings of this study and provides directions for future research that could give us insight on previously uncharted territory.