The role of organizational culture and management practices in the development of trust in organizations: experience of Russian and foreign research*

Abstract

The relevance of the topic is justified by the objective need to modernize domestic enterprises in response to the changing conditions and increasing uncertainty of the external competitive environment. The success of implementing various innovations in an organization largely depends on the support for innovative projects from its employees. Organizational trust is considered as one of the conditions for the formation of such support. Organizational trust is defined as the acceptance of vulnerability based on the confidence in one’s expectations towards others. Standardization of these expectations in the form of values and norms is provided by organizational culture. Based on theoretical arguments and results of empirical research conducted by both Russian and foreign authors, the paper reveals the influence that organizational culture elements and management practices have on the development of organizational trust. The analysis focuses on the interpersonal level of the formation and development of organizational trust in situations of horizontal and vertical interaction. The literature review allowed us to identify the main cultural and managerial factors for the formation of organizational culture of trust. The regularities that reflect the conditionality of organizational trust are formulated: it depends on the degree of consistency of organizational goals, values, and norms; the manifestation in organizational rituals and activities; a supportive management style; an open control system and a fair system of sanctions. It is shown that the literature pays insufficient attention to the specifics of trust formation as a factor of industrial enterprises modernization. A list of research hypotheses about the influence of organizational culture elements on organizational trust is formulated, which can become the basis for the study of the process of forming organizational culture of trust at industrial enterprises.