EGOS Standing Working Group on Organisational Trust

Brief Overview

During the last decade a wide range of events have considerably shaken people's trust in organisations. Accounting frauds such as the Enron and Worldcom case, and employer trust breaches like the spying scandal of the large German retailer Lidl, have all fuelled questions about organisational trustworthiness. The unprecedented recent events in the global financial sector have focused attention squarely on trust at the organisational level. The problem that arises takes on quite dramatic dimensions as the long term survival of organisations and sustainable organisational performance crucially depends on trust from key stakeholders, such as investors, employees, customers, suppliers and business partners (Barney & Hansen, 1994)Yet, despite widespread recognition that trust operates at multiple levels (Rousseau, Sitkin, Burt, & Camerer, 1998)and that an organisation’s reputation for trustworthiness is a key "source of competitive advantage" (Barney and Hansen 1994: 175), research has been slow to systematically and conceptually unpack the notion of organisation-level trust as distinct from interpersonal trust.

At present, there is no clear consensus on the concept of trust or trustworthiness at the organisational level, nor is there coherent theory, an agreed model or sufficient empirical research to guide a comprehensive understanding of organisational trust and how the latter might be linked to trust at more macro and micro levels. Indeed, relatively few attempts have been made to capture the essence of impersonal trust [for foundational work see Luhmann (1979); Shapiro (1987) and Zucker (1986) and how macro and micro level forces influence trust dynamics at the institutional level. Some research suggests that interorganisational trust and public trust in organisations and institutions may have different dimensions than interpersonal trust (e.g. Zaheer, McEvily, & Perrone, 1998). Recent and emerging work has started to unpack the concept of organisational trust and identify its determinants. For example, Bachmann(2001)suggests that strongly regulated business systems produce much higher levels of impersonal trust than liberal capitalist systems. Gillespie and Dietz (2009) propose that employees’ perceptions of organisational trustworthiness are influenced by cues sent by six key system components, including organisational leadership and management, culture, strategy, structures and policies, external governance, and public reputation. The latter authors further identify that the processes of trust repair at the organisational level are fundamentally different from those at the interpersonal level, with several dilemmas and problems arising for institutions that do not pertain to interpersonal contexts. Empirical studies on trust in organisations indicate that, although related to interpersonal trust, organisational trust is a distinct construct with unique antecedents, such as legal arrangements (Arrighetti, Bachmann, & Deakin, 1997; Lane & Bachmann, 1996), perceived organisational support (Tan & Tan, 2000) distributive and procedural justice (Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001; Colquitt, Scott, & LePine, 2007) high involvement HR practices (Searle, et al., forthcoming; Searle & Skinner, 2011) and organisational control systems (Weibel, et al., 2009).

In sum, we seek to offer a critical space in which to systematically and conceptually unpack the notion of organisation-level trust as distinct from interpersonal trust, focusing on both trust within and between organisations. Our aim is to inspire a transdisciplinary discourse that complements and contrasts more micro-oriented approaches, such as those originating in psychology or behavioural economics, with insights from sociology, management studies, political science and cultural anthropology. We also seek to encourage research that complements the methods currently dominating trust research (i.e. survey studies and experiments) with mixed, grounded and critical approaches, including ethnographic and other qualitative methods, as well as novel research designs commonly used in more macro-oriented fields (e.g. con-joint analysis, vignettes etc).

The aims of this research agenda include the following activities:

• Stimulation of critical debate and discussion about organisational trust
• Promotion of novel methodologies that are specific to, and more appropriate for this topic
• Support for research projects in the field of organisational trust, particularly amongst early career scholars and PhD students
• Proactive encouragement of high quality organisational trust papers for publication in key journals and edited collections
• Development of new approaches to teaching the key issues of organisational trust