Understanding Trust at the Organizational Level: Conceptual and Empirical Advances

Abstract

In the last five years organizational trust has become a core topic in the popular press. This interest can be partially explained by the fact that organizational trust has become a scarce resource since the global financial crisis. In addition this crisis of trust is particularly concerning because the long term survival of organizations crucially depends on trust from key stakeholders, such as investors, employees, customers, suppliers and business partners. Yet, despite widespread recognition that trust operates at multiple levels, and that an organization’s reputation for trustworthiness is a key “source of competitive advantage”, research has been slow to systematically and conceptually unpack the notion of organization-level trust as distinct from interpersonal trust. At present, there is no clear consensus on the concept of trust or trustworthiness at the organizational level, nor is there coherent theory, an agreed model or sufficient empirical research to guide a comprehensive understanding of or...