Thus in large organizations, in which the official extent of responsibility in the higher echelons far exceeds the individual's capacity for responsibility (i.e. the ability to process information), there arise very significant relationships of personal trust between superiors and underlings, between line executives and staff positions, between parliamentarians and the higher civil service. In these relationships one side, because of its overburdening responsibility, is obliged to confer personal trust, which cannot be admitted and articulated, and the other side seizes on this trust, is sensitive to its conditions and limits, cultivates it, uses it as a basis for personal influence over the truster – and justifies it by behaving in an appropriate manner.

XREF: Connects to theories of bounded rationality (Simon) and delegation in principal-agent relationships, plus informal power structures in organizations.

Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, loc. 244