Reputation on the Line
Hedden, L. N., & Pratt, M. G. (2026). Reputation on the Line: How the Third-Party Dilemma Shapes Trust in High-Risk Work. Administrative Science Quarterly, 71(1), 128-165.
Our opinion
In high-risk occupations, trust among team members is often a crucial factor for safety. But how is this interpersonal trust granted – or withheld? This remarkable study explores the mechanisms, far more subtle than is commonly assumed, that govern these decisions within a specific professional community. The findings, which are surprising, reveal the negative facets of a socio-professional world dominated by the issue of trust. They invite a measure of caution regarding calls to base safety on trust.
Trust and Safety
Our Summary
In the United States of America, the construction and maintenance of high‑voltage power lines involve two categories of technicians. Some are permanently employed by electric utility companies. Others are independent workers who are hired for periods ranging from a few weeks to several months. These contract linemen travel across the country, moving from one worksite to another. The crews they join are made up of other contract workers and are led by a foreman. The recruitment process for contract workers operates as follows: the contracting company or the union (depending on the case) sends the foreman the name of a lineman; the foreman then has two or three days either to accept the candidate (in which case no action is required) or to reject them; if the candidate is rejected, a new name is proposed to the foreman.
The key issue at stake in these recruitment decisions is safety. As we know, this is an intrinsically dangerous occupation. Linemen work in close cooperation: their safety depends on their teammates. However, for linemen, knowing the trade is not sufficient to be a teammate who can be trusted on the job. In other words, some workers are reliable and others are not. When a foreman puts a crew together, their primary concern is to make sure that the person sent by the company or the union is reliable. But there are far too many contract workers for the foreman to know them all personally. As a result, the foreman will seek information about the candidate from linemen they know personally, whether among the members of the crew or outside it.
By analyzing how these recruitment decisions are made, the study – which is based on 114 interviews with contract linemen – seeks to understand how trust is granted (or not) within this professional community. It shows that the mechanism relies on exchanges in which individual reputations are at stake.
In social life, asking someone for their opinion about another person is often delicate and may be perceived negatively. Within the community of contract linemen, however, this is considered a legitimate practice, because of the safety stakes involved. A lineman who is asked about a colleague has a duty to respond – and to respond honestly. Honesty, in fact, is a professional value that is strongly emphasized in this line of work.
However, when a lineman gives a positive recommendation about a colleague, they put their own reputation on the line. If the colleague is hired and turns out to be unreliable (or at least is perceived as such), the person who recommended them risks being judged incompetent or dishonest by those to whom the recommendation was made. Two types of reliability-related reputation are therefore at stake: one’s reputation as a crew member and one’s reputation as an advisor. A poor reputation – whether as a crew member or as an advisor – leads to difficulties in being recruited and can quickly result in exclusion from the labor market.
One possible solution would be to give only negative opinions when consulted. However, adopting this strategy leads to being negatively labeled (a shit talker) and, as a result, also to a poor reputation. The lineman consulted by a foreman must therefore behave in a more subtle way. When they have a negative opinion of the candidate, they express it in a blunt and succinct manner (for example: “He’s no good.”). When they have a positive opinion, they express it in a more qualified and restrained way, with caveats (for example: “This is what I’ve seen of him, but I can’t make a full assessment.”).
These reputation‑sharing mechanisms have the effect that negative reputations spread quickly and tend to persist, whereas positive reputations remain fragile. From one worksite to another, from one crew to the next, linemen must constantly stay on their guard and be concerned with giving signs of reliability. As for those who have acquired a negative reputation, it is virtually impossible for them to disprove it, since repeated exclusion deprives them of the opportunity to demonstrate their reliability.
This is a surprising and troubling finding. Surprising, because in a community that relies on trust, trust itself remains a scarce and fragile commodity. Troubling, because this world – one from which it is so easy to be excluded – is clearly a difficult one to live in. To the harshness of material working conditions and the dangers inherent in trade social risks are added, which are undoubtedly a source of stress. Trust, a factor of social comfort, thus appears here, paradoxically, to generate discomfort.
At the collective level, this situation is also problematic. Indeed, while these mechanisms for attributing trust ensure that genuinely unreliable technicians are screened out, this is likely achieved at the cost of simultaneously excluding reliable technicians. Linemen themselves acknowledge that some individuals may be unfairly sidelined following a minor incident that earned them a negative reputation from which they were never able to recover. This perverse effect also results in a chronic shortage of technicians, leading to degraded working conditions on worksites.
Comments by the Foncsi’s team
The relevance of this research goes far beyond high‑voltage electrical work. In France, while there are no contract linemen as such, there are high‑risk occupations in which contract workers play an important role. Certain categories of temporary workers, for example, may be highly dependent on their reputation. It would be interesting to apply the same analytical approach in those contexts. Similar mechanisms can also be found in situations of cascading subcontracting, in which the guarantee of reliability provided by contractual relationships between organizations becomes diluted across multiple levels of subcontracting. This is the case, for example, in offshore Oil & Gas in Norway, where up to seven levels of subcontracting may be involved. The system operates through a mechanism very similar to the one described in the article: the formation of a “small world” in which a “reputation market” regulates hiring.
But let us look more broadly. Similar mechanisms linking trust and safety may also exist within organizations themselves, beyond hiring, among members of a team or a department, whether permanent employees or not. In the field of safety, trust is often promoted as a virtuous contribution to safety – as a complement, or even, at least in part, as a desirable substitute for rules, control, and hierarchy. It is thus seen as an essential ingredient of “managed” safety. A balanced trust mechanism would in particular allow for a relevant modulation of mutual monitoring, or even – as is classically observed in highly autonomous teams of air traffic controllers – a genuine management of skills, whereby critical positions or schedules are not assigned to individuals who are experiencing difficulties.
Moreover, management based on trust is often portrayed as more humane, more adaptive, more inclusive, and so on. All of this is certainly appealing, but the study of American contract linemen calls for caution. What it teaches us is that the social mechanisms through which reputations are constructed and trust is attributed can be difficult to live with, and even cruel. They may also be only partially effective and give rise to unexpected negative effects. For example, they may become genuine self‑fulfilling prophecies, reinforcing vulnerabilities by removing the “weak” from opportunities for practice and learning, or, conversely, generating overconfidence.
The practical implication for safety experts and managers is therefore as follows: before placing trust in trust, one must ask how, in the specific context of a given occupation or work situation, trust is constructed, attributed, and transmitted. Trust is not a virtue; it is a complex social mechanism that must be understood if its effects are to be effectively managed.
