‘Widening the radius of trust’: ethnographic explorations of trust and Indian business

Trust has latterly become an important focus of enquiry across the social sciences, and this article reflects critically upon the current literature on the basis of ethnographic research into the transactions of small companies in several sectors of Indian industry, and the reorganization that is taking place in Indian family business groups in the context of economic globalization. It is concluded that much of the argument about the increasing importance of trust in the context of globalization is misplaced, and that it serves an ideological function. The problem of business management in India is that of bringing about change in the institutional framework and in business behaviour in a context in which these changes confront a culture of ‘selective trust’ amongst groups of people in specific social networks.