Understanding Employee Trust in Management: Conceptual Clarification and Correlates

Abstract

Employee trust is an integral part of the organizational behavior lexicon, but professional use seems to employ different referents for the trust invested. The goal here is to focus on a specific referent for trust — managers — and examine the extent to which trust varies among different levels of management. The data analyzed come from a larger study of two organizations, a large municipal fire department and a private manufacturing company. Three classes of variables are tested as a model of antecedent correlates of managerial trust: characteristics of the trustee (gender, ethnicity, years worked under the manager), characteristics of the organization (layoffs, managerial turnover), and characteristics of the manager (technical expertise and credibility). Although there were differences by manager (supervisor vs. CEO) and between the organizations, regression analyses indicate that overall the model fits the data well.