Currently reading Spencer (2026) on “Institutional trust load: reframing trust as a structural demand in higher education governance”

Most of the time when I have written about trust, it was about trust in the relationship between people. But trust also has other dimensions. For example, “Institutional Trust Load” according to Spencer (2026) describes trust which “is structurally relied upon to sustain administrative processes under conditions of ambiguity, inconsistency, or deferred resolution“. So trust that is required so administrative structures don’t collapse (and not just a “nice to have” for better learning).

I haven’t even read further than the abstract right now, but this hits me. There is so much trust required for academia to work! I moved to Sweden — via the Öresund bridge, which is actually a tunnel that then leads onto a bridge on an artificial island, see featured image! — trusting that I would get the permanent position I had been promised; that academic development would work reasonably similarly there that I could do something good based on my own experiences, knowledge, skills; that I would find community; that it would all be worth it because I am doing an important and meaningful job. Which, if you think about it (which I really didn’t too much before I moved) is quite a risky assumption! Clearly I arrived with a huge amount of trust in Lund University as one manifestation of the institution of academia. And then what happens once confronted with reality?

In Spencer (2026)’s conceptualization of Institutional Trust Load, trust is “something institutions consume through routine administrative practices, rather than something they simply possess or cultivate“. It is finite and subject to cumulative strain; it measures how much institutions rely on trust for their functioning. How much trust is needed for me and so many other people to give up their old jobs and homes and move to Lund, to compensate for unclear guidance, to overcome friction in the system, to persist through all the frustrations that happen in any large institution? “When reliance on trust […] becomes routine, trust is no longer merely an evaluative response but a structural requirement for institutional functioning“. And at the same time it is eroded, little by little, not necessarily through obvious failure of leadership or untrustworthiness of actors, but by the little bit of friction induced in different spots by systemic conditions, by having to trust good intentions without being able to see them play out in actions.

This is such a helpful way of thinking about trust, and also trust-building in the classroom! In our own research when asking students what teachers do that makes them trust them, Rachel and I found that students say they trust teachers at LTH purely based on the fact that they are employed by LTH, even before they have met a teacher. Trust is there, they say, and it’s up to the teacher to maintain it. So far, so good, but at the same time, it is easy to see that if trust has started to erode over the course of a student’s time at university — maybe not due to teacher misconduct, but to ambiguity in rules and regulations, for example in what you are allowed to use AI for and what constitutes cheating — meeting a new teacher will not magically reset trust, but the diminished trust in the institution will color the relationship with that new teacher, too, and will require greater effort to rebuild.

When we think of trust, and trust load, that way, there are three important distinctions from how we think about relational trust:

• it is cumulative, not episodic
• it is systemic, not individual
• it depends on the institutional structures

Trust load — the strain on existing trust — accumulates when there is systemic ambiguity about who makes decisions based on what, on what timelines, etc; when policies and practices are not aligned; when resolution of issues is delayed; and when there is slow or no communication. So it is institutional norms and administrative practices that are slowly grating away from the existing trust. What I find really interesting then is that “[b]ecause Institutional Trust Load accumulates gradually, its effects are often misinterpreted. Stakeholder withdrawal, reduced engagement, or quiet recalibration of expectations may be attributed to apathy or individual disposition rather than to structural trust demands.” Excessive trust load is a risk factor in institutions, and one that is not commonly considered: “Governance decisions often prioritize efficiency, flexibility, or conflict avoidance, relying implicitly on stakeholders’ willingness to tolerate ambiguity or delay. While such reliance may be expedient in the short term, sustained dependence on trust to absorb unresolved processes increases cumulative strain. Leaders who fail to account for trust load may underestimate the long-term consequences of routine administrative practices that appear neutral or procedurally justified.”

So how would institutions then reduce trust load? For example by being transparent about how decisions are being made, so that nobody needs to trust that the outcome will be fair, but can see for themselves what criteria are being applied, by whom, at what point in time. And if the decision is delayed for whatever reason, to communicate that, rather than rely on people’s trust in the process.

I find this article so helpful to widen my perspective on trust. While of course we are usually aware of the influence of an institution’s reputation, or the general trust in academia or a bigger system that ensures quality; and how this, for example over a student’s time at university, changes into much more relational trust, see for example Lewicka (2022), this idea of constant incremental erosion of trust, like water dripping on a stone, is really useful. There are so many times in our practice as teachers where we — explicitly or implicitly — ask students to rely on their trust in us/the system. This is even the advice that we give when talking about how to build trust with students in the presence of AI. But maybe rather than asking students to trust in our competence, our care and concern, our values, our identity, wouldn’t it be better to give explicit examples that explain how our actions show all of that?

Spencer, R. G. (2026). Institutional trust load: reframing trust as a structural demand in higher education governance. Studies in Higher Education, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2026.2673452