Drawing on the important process based research methods developed by Langley, et., al (1999a, 1999b, 2013), we believe organizations need to examine the impacts of how organizational events/activities/choices impact their ability to build trust with both individuals and groups within systems. These are known as changes in “states of being” over time.
States of being can help conceptualize changes in attitudes, behaviors and outcomes as trust is built through relationships. Trust building in this framework is different from the variance research that seeks to ascribe variables that are precursors of trust, and instead observes how process is mediated by strategies of events, activities and choices that change the trajectory of that process in the future. The process is in turn mediated by future events, activities and choices, and so on.
In community partnerships, states of being are impacted by activities and events that are taken on, and the choices the people and the partnerships make as they undertake them. In our evaluation of SALT work in Kenya, we show how this works in action.
As shown below, changes in states of being can relate to thinking (State 2), behaviors (State 3) and conditions (State 4). We believe it is only possible to make sustainable changes if you start working from the beginning (State 1), to State 2 (thinking/attitude change), and that this will impact lasting changes in States 3 (behaviors) and 4 (outcomes).
We used this framework to capture “states of being” changes as we implemented the SALT program over time.
Below, we show how we used process-based changes to show how trust was built through the relationships of those participating in events, activities and choices over time. Those impacted changes in thinking, attitudes and behaviors in individuals and groups who made changes in the community. Each of these events, activities and choices shown below were transformed into metrics of change. These map to reciprocal measures of trust building that include achievement of common goals, self interests, and expression of gratitude.
