Managerial Trustworthiness and Organizational Outcomes

Abstract

Using data from the Federal Human Capital Survey, we demonstrate that the managerial traits of competence, integrity, and benevolence share an important common dimension that we identify as the trustworthiness of managerial leadership (TWML). Using recursive hierarchical linear models, we demonstrate that levels of TWML are strongly and positively associated with several measures of perceived organizational outcomes. This relationship between TWML and perceived outcomes is especially strong in low-performing agencies and in agencies experiencing increased uncertainty due to structural and upper level leadership changes. We draw two substantive conclusions from these empirical results. First, it is clear that the characteristics of managers matter for outcomes of public organizations. In particular, trustworthy managers preside over more productive organizations and are better able to maintain and even increase organizational outcomes in agencies challenged by low level of performance and perturbations in the external environment. Second, public managers and management scholars ought to view trust not only as an exogenous variable but also as a managerial resource to be cultivated.