Secrecy is usually considered destructive to trust. However, people are often involved in conflicting social commitments in which transparency to one trustor may violate the trust of others. Georg Simmel suggests that secrecy can serve important social purposes; consequently, strategically balancing transparency and secrecy can be conducive to social cooperation and building intersubjective trust. This is particularly the case for trusted intermediaries tasked with building trust in multiple conflicting relations. In this study, we investigate how shop stewards actively navigate the transparency–secrecy nexus as trusted intermediaries to build trust and gain maximal influence over management decisions. The study is based on qualitative interviews with 29 shop stewards within the Danish care sector. Shop stewards depend on co-worker trust and transparency, whereas their influence on management requires secrecy and trust, which makes shop stewards vulnerable to criticism and mistrust from their co-workers. This study shows that transparency and secrecy are important trust work tools for creating and maintaining trust, processes that require efficient compartmentalisation of issues, roles, and contextual meaning in separate formal and informal spaces of collaboration with management to avoid co-worker suspicion or conflict with management.

保密通常被认为是破坏信任的。然而，人们经常参与相互冲突的社会承诺，其中对一个信任者的透明度可能会违反其他人的信任。Georg Simmel 认为保密可以服务于重要的社会目的；因此，从战略上平衡透明度和保密性可以有利于社会合作和建立主体间信任。对于负责在多种冲突关系中建立信任的可信中介来说尤其如此。在这项研究中，我们调查店员如何作为受信任的中介积极应对透明度-保密关系，以建立信任并对管理决策产生最大影响。该研究基于对丹麦护理行业 29 名店员的定性访谈。店员依赖于同事的信任和透明度，而他们对管理层的影响需要保密和信任，这使得店员容易受到同事的批评和不信任。这项研究表明，透明度和保密性是重要的信任工作工具，用于建立和维持信任，这些过程需要在与管理层合作的单独的正式和非正式空间中有效地划分问题、角色和上下文意义，以避免同事怀疑或与管理层发生冲突管理。