In the knowledge based economy, knowledge production has become
increasingly important for the competitiveness of firms, cities and
regions and as an explanatory factor of spatial economic dynamics.
In an immense amount of literature in economic geography, sociology
and economics it has been argued that knowledge production
often takes place in inter-organisational collaborations, and that
trust is an important prerequisite for such collaboration to succeed.
The concept of trust, however, remains often blurred and vaguely
defined in much of the literature: it often only appears as an asset, an
instrument or an input in economic relations. The paper broaden the
understanding of trust in local knowledge production by suggesting
an approach to trust as an inter-personal feeling to be analysed on
three different but interrelated scales depending on the socio-spatial
contexts of the actors. The approach avoids a reification of interorganisational
relations as the place for knowledge production but allows an analysis of trust to move between micro-, meso- and macro scales seeing trust as an inter-personal feeling. The conclusion is that trust in diverse socio-spatial contexts takes on different forms at different scales. This is illustrated by a case study of knowledge production in inter-organisational collaborations in the Sønderborg
region, Denmark.