Trust In Organizational Context Research Articles

Team identification, trust and conflict: a mediation model

PurposeThe current study aims to address the relationship between trust, team identification, and team conflict. Specifically, it aims to examine whether trust in peers mediates the relationship between team identification and team conflict.Design/methodology/approachThis is an empirical paper based on two field studies. In Study 1, 241 employees in a USFortune500 company distributed in various and mostly R&D teams were surveyed. In Study 2, 205 employees in a health care organization in the Midwest were surveyed.FindingsTeam identification was related to lower levels of both task conflict and relationship conflict. This relationship, however, is mediated by the employees' trust in their peers.Research limitations/implicationsThis finding addresses concerns about the mechanisms by which employee attitudes contribute to work behaviors.Practical implicationsThis study highlights the importance of cultivating team members' sense of “we” rather than a sense of “I” in the team context, reinforced the crucial role of trust in organizational context. Further, by shedding light on the process by which teams come into conflict, our results suggest a means by which managers and organizations can work towards creating optimal levels of conflict in their work teams.Originality/valueAs far as it is known, this is the first field study that has examined the mediating role of trust between team identity and team conflict.

Building interpersonal trust within organizations: a relational signalling perspective

This article develops the foundations for a theory of interpersonal trust-building based on relational signalling theory (RST). RST is based on the assumptions that rationality is bounded through framing, that preferences are partially determined by altruism (through a distinction between foreground and background goals), and that an individual’s action is influenced by the normative context in which he or she operates. The focus is on interpersonal trust in work relations within organizations. Interpersonal trust-building is construed as an interactive process in which both individuals learn about each other’s trustworthiness in different situations. Four conditions for the building of interpersonal trust within organizations are (1) the suspension of all opportunistic behaviour, or the removal of distrust; (2) exchange of positive relational signals; (3) avoiding negative relational signals, i.e., dealing with trouble; and (4) the stimulation of frame resonance, or the introduction of trust-enhancing organizational policies. The proposed theory can explain important characteristics of trust in organizational contexts, such as the interactive nature of trust, the learning required to build trust, the role of psychological mechanisms (such as attributions and perceptions) in decisions to trust, the limits to trust, asymmetries between trust and distrust and the context-dependency of trust.

Trust in public-sector senior management

Trust is widely regarded as an important ingredient of organizational effectiveness. Although there is accumulating empirical evidence supporting the important role of trust in organizational contexts, there is limited empirical evidence that focuses on the nature, determinants and influence of trust in senior management. This is particularly true in the public-sector environment. In this paper, based on a review of the literature, we propose a model that identifies key antecedents and consequences of trust in public-sector senior management. We used data collected from two public-sector organizations to identify levels of trust and correlates of trust in senior management. We also conducted a series of regression analyses to identify more clearly the extent to which each of the antecedents influenced trust in senior management and the extent to which trust in senior management influenced each of the consequences. The results suggest that effective organizational communication, procedural justice, organizational support and satisfaction with job security predict trust in public-sector senior management. The results also show that trust in senior management influences affective commitment, continuance commitment, cynicism towards change and turnover intention. Evidence was presented which suggests that trust partially, rather than fully, mediates the relationships between the antecedents of trust and the consequences of trust. In general terms, the findings will prove helpful to human resource practitioners interested in diagnosing and managing trust in public-sector organizations.