A very crude measure is to ask how many layers of supervisors are between the employee and the CEO. Many people don't know, so this is not a very accurate measure.

Thanks a lot David Dunaetz !

I don't know if you could make a correlation between the level of organisational trust and the hierarchical position of an individual. For instance, Paine (2003) and Shockley-Zalabak (2000) provides some scales how to measure trust on an individual level.

Literature:

Shockley-Zalabak, P., Ellis, K., & Winograd, G. (2000). Organizational trust: What it means, why it matters. Organization Development Journal, 18(4), 35.

Paine, K. D. (2003). Guidelines for measuring trust in organizations. The institute for public relations, 2003, 9-10.

Roland Kaulbars Thanks a lot, I will have a look at these papers.

I ultimately opted for the following kind of survey:

A) Survey of the professional status according to the the Federal Statistical Office. In the "Employees" area, for example, there are the following categories:

Statistisches Bundesamt (Hrsg.). (2016). Demographische Standards. Ausgabe 2016 (Statistik und Wissenschaft Nr. 17). Wiesbaden, Germany (see page 46-47)

https://www.destatis.de/GPStatistik/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/DEMonografie_derivate_00001549/Band17_DemographischeStandards1030817169004.pdf

B) Assignment of professional status to an autonomy level (scale from 1 to 5) according to Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik (2003)

Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik, J. H. P. (2003). "Stellung im Beruf" als Ersatz für eine Berufsklassifikation zur Ermittlung vonsozialem Prestige. ZUMA-Nachrichten, 27 (53), 114–127.

https://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/handle/document/20776