This conceptual article addresses the need for more research on distrust in general, and the emergence of pervasive distrust in particular, as highlighted by Bijlsma-Frankema et al. (2015), Sitkin and Bijlsma-Frankema (2018), and Six and Latusek (2023). We offer a novel explanation of pervasive organizational distrust that arises following shocking, value-based organizational transgressions. We explain how stakeholders can come to rapidly exhibit a deep and pervasive distrust in organizations that commit shocking, value-based transgressions. In develop our ideas, we draw on Shattered Assumptions Theory (Janoff-Bulman, 1989, 1992) and Slavoj Žižek’s (2018, 2019, 2023) concept of re-totalization to explain how stakeholders perceptions of intractably complex and intractable feelings of vulnerability, lead them rapidly to formulate a re-totalized view of the transgressing organization. In addition to providing a perspective on how stakeholders can come to rapidly distrust an organization, this theory provides important contributions to research on distrust development and distrust remediation, and trust repair.
