Organizational Trust Repair Research Articles

Repairing trust within teams after organizational change

PurposeThis study examines trust-repair practices at the team level after organizational change.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative research approach was adopted, and data were collected from key informants through focus group discussions and interviews. The data analysis involved thematic coding and followed the structured procedure.FindingsThis study found that after organization change, trust can be repaired at the team level by improving team leaders' information sharing and knowledge in change management, and by enforcing communication, collaboration and ethical behaviour among team members.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper makes three key contributions by (1) identifying trust violations in teams, (2) proposing trust-repair mechanisms and (3) extending the understanding of trust-repair and preservation at the team level following organizational change.Practical implicationsThis paper provides practical information from a real-work context and can improve managers' understanding of active trust-repair.Originality/valueThis paper outlines active trust-repair mechanisms in an organizational change context and expands the current theory by presenting novel insights into organizational trust-repair at the team level. This study contributes to trust literature by proposing promising avenues for future trust-repair research.

Employee trust repair after organizational change

PurposeThis study examines the trust-repair practices after organizational change.Design/methodology/approachPrevious research on this topic is limited, so an abductive qualitative research approach was adopted. The data were collected from key informants through focus group discussions and interviews.FindingsBeyond previous research findings, this study identified that employee trust can be repaired after benevolence-based trust violations by enforcing ethical behavior and fostering managers' emotional intelligence and after competence-based violations by fostering the sense-making process and by involving third parties in trust recovery. In addition, transparent information sharing and strong management actions predict positive trust outcomes in a change context.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper makes three key contributions to the literature on organizational trust by (1) identifying trust violations after organizational change, (2) proposing a process model on trust repair and (3) extending understanding of trust repair practices by revealing new elements.Practical implicationsThis study provides practical information from a real work context and can improve managers' understanding of active trust-repair practices.Originality/valueThis paper outlines active trust-repair practices in an organizational change context and expands the current theory by presenting novel insights into organizational trust repair. In addition, this paper contributes to the trust-repair literature by proposing promising avenues for future trust repair research.

A strategic action fields perspective on organizational trust repair

While the extant literature on organizational trust repair has considered the agency and trust repair actions of individual organizations, it has neglected repair following trust-damaging events affecting specific industries. Drawing on the theory of strategic action fields we ask two research questions: (1) How do reputational scandals involving a few transgressing firms affect trust in the whole institutional field? (2) Do the transgressing firms repair trust in the same way as the blameless ones in the same field? To answer these questions we investigated four cases of retail organizations that engaged in trust repair actions following a food safety scandal, two widely held to have transgressed, and two that were held to be relatively blameless. We compared the trust repair strategies of both groups, finding that even the blameless organizations felt compelled to act to repair trust. However, blameless organizations also sought to differentiate themselves from the transgressing ones by using specific strategies to restore trust.

Denial outperforms apology in repairing organizational trust despite strong evidence of guilt

Previous work in the areas of organizational trust repair and crisis communication has provided conflicting answers to the question of whether denial can be more effective than apology in repairing stakeholder trust in a company following an integrity-based violation. This article reports the results of an experiment designed to (i) test the effects of these two strategies on individuals’ trust in a company accused of corruption, and (ii) determine whether and how evidence of the company’s guilt influences stakeholder reactions to its trust repair message. The results demonstrate that, when evidence against the company is weak, trust is restored more successfully with a denial than an apology. Contrary to our hypothesis, denial was found to outperform apology in repairing perceptions of the company’s integrity and benevolence even in the face of strong evidence, and it was as effective as apology in restoring perceived ability and trusting intentions. These results provide empirical evidence for the ‘paradoxical effect’ that an open and honest attitude can, in the short term, be more detrimental to organizations than a defensive strategy. More research on the factors that determine the credibility and persuasiveness of corporate denial is called for.

Organizational Reintegration and Trust Repair after an Integrity Violation: A Case Study

ABSTRACT:This paper presents a holistic, contextualised case study of reintegration and trust repair at a UK utilities firm in the wake of its fraud and data manipulation scandal. Drawing upon conceptual frameworks of reintegration and organizational trust repair, we analyze the decisions and actions taken by the company in its efforts to restore trust with its stakeholders. The analysis reveals seven themes on the merits of proposed approaches for reintegration after an integrity violation (including open investigations, accurate explanations, apologies, penance, and systemic reforms), and novel insights on the role of organizational identity, “changing of the guard” and cultural reforms alongside procedural modifications. The case further supports the dynamic nature of stakeholder salience across the reintegration process. The study both supports propositions from existing frameworks and suggests novel theoretical extensions for future research.

Revisiting industrial sociology to shed new light on organizational trust repair

This paper attempts to classify of literature on organizational trust and trust repair according to its ontological, epistemological and axiological roots by drawing on two classical sociological f...

Re-conceptualising organizational trust repair: The case of repeated transgressions

The organizational trust repair literature has traditionally focused on variance theory explanations of individual-level trust relations. However, there have been recent calls to reconsider its complex nature by drawing on contextual accounts and process theory. So, in this paper, we attempt to develop such a theory of trust breakdown and repair to explain repeated transgressions of trust by organizations. We draw on the ‘strong’ version of process theory, which combines stages and repeated cycles of transgression of trust and attempted repair, and Weick’s ideas of sensemaking. These cycles of trust breakdown and repair are embedded in different levels of context that both shape their trajectory and are enacted by key actors in the process of trust repair. Finally, we illustrate our reconceptualization with a case study of repeated trust breakdown and attempted repair in Royal Bank of Scotland, one of the largest failures in corporate history.

Trust Repair After An Organization-Level Failure

We propose a systemic, multilevel framework for understanding trust repair at the organizational level. Drawing on systems theory, we theorize how each component of an organization's system shapes employees’ perceptions of the organization's trustworthiness and can contribute to failures and effective trust repair. We distinguish the framework from prior work grounded in dyadic assumptions and propose underlying principles and a four-stage process for organizational trust repair. Finally, we explore the implications for research and practice.