Despite scholars’ increasing acknowledgment of the role third parties can play in others’ trust decisions, we know very little about what motivates these parties’ information sharing. Our research examines this process via a qualitative, inductive study of linemen: the men and women who work on power lines. We show how features of their work context give rise to a strong reliance on third-party information for trust and strong accountability for third parties who share reputational information. These conditions cultivate what we call the “third-party dilemma”: Linemen feel trapped between desires to keep trustors safe and desires to protect their own reputations. We further explain how the information-sharing practices by which they manage this dilemma ultimately affect the trust triad by allowing third parties to partially safeguard their reputations, encouraging trustors to provisionally grant or withhold trust, and subjecting trustees to either sticky negative reputations or fragile positive reputations. These dynamics encourage lower trust within the triad. We conclude by highlighting the importance of the work context in shaping third-party motives, discussing the trust-related implications of how the third-party dilemma is managed, and redirecting trust research beyond dyadic (trustor–trustee) models of trust.

As threats to democracy endanger the rights and freedoms of people around the world, scholars are increasingly interrogating the role that organizations play in shaping democratic and authoritarian societies. Just as societies can be more or less democratic, so, too, can organizations. This essay, in honor of ASQ ’s 70th volume, argues for a deeper focus in organizational research on the extent to which organizations themselves are democratic and the outcomes associated with these varied models of organizing. First, we provide a framework for considering the extent to which organizations are democratically organized, accounting for the varied ways in which workers can participate in their organizations. Second, we call for research on the outcomes associated with democratic organizing at both the organizational and societal levels. We build from research arguing that the extent to which workers participate in organizational decision making can spill over to impact their expectations of and participation in civic life. Moving forward, we argue it is critical to recognize that questions of democracy and authoritarianism concern not only the political contexts in which organizations are embedded but also how organizations themselves are structured and contribute to society.