Hello Lesley, The following article is a good place to start if you are looking for a trust measurement in the organizational context:

Schoorman, F. D., Mayer, R. C., & Davis, J. H. (2007). AN INTEGRATIVE MODEL OF ORGANIZATIONAL TRUST : PAST , PRESENT , AND FUTURE. Academy of Management Review, 32(2), 344–354.

Trust is also widely seen as a factor that infulences knowledge sharing in organizations. We cite some articles related to these in our paper below:

Muhammed, S., Doll, W. J., & Deng, X. (2011). Impact of knowledge management practices on task knowledge: an individual level study. International Journal of Knowledge Management, 7(4), 1–21.

Hope this helps..

Shan.

Thanks - I'll look into these leads.

Hello Lesley,

You can check out the following books and article

1. Fox A (1974) Beyond Contract: Work, Power and Trust Relations London: Faber & Faber

2. Trust and power on the shop floor : an ethnographical, ethical, and philosophical study on responsible behaviour in industrial organisations [PhD thesis]

Verkerk, M.J. \ 2004

3. Ferres N, Connell J, Travaglione A (2004) Co-worker trust as a social catalyst for constructive employee attitudes. Journal of Managerial Psychology 19: 608-622.

Thank you Matilda - the Ferres et al paper looks interesting.

You are welcome! Good luck!

Matilda

Tom Simpson at Oxford works on trust, sincerity, testimony, and on these issues as they relate to governments and the financial sector. See here, and click also on his 'Research' and 'Publications' tab: 

http://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/people/tom-simpson

Dear Lesley,

You may look at my publication, entitled, "Judeh, Mahfuz (2011). Interpersonal Trust and its Relationship to Demographic Factors: An Empirical Study, European Journal of Scientific Research, Vol. 55, Issue 1, 154-163.

You may look for Cristian Tileaga's works, i.e. https://www.academia.edu/1834921/Trust_moral_identity_and_coming_to_terms_with_the_past

This work includes some excellent chapters on trust: Candlin, C., & Crichton, J. (2013). Discourses of Trust. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

I see trust as a basic human emotion that arises out of parent/child attachment. The following is an brief extract from my book 'Love and Loss'

My classification brings together Erikson’s concept of ‘Basic Trust’ (1950) and Bowlby’s observation that secure attachments to parents leave a child with trust in itself and others (1973b). It rests on the assumption that the principle function of parenting is to provide a secure base from which developing children will learn the extent to which they can rely on themselves and the extent to which they can rely on others. These two dimensions I have termed 'Self Trust' and 'Other Trust'.

The table does not download. It shows the interaction of Ainsworth's well-known patterns of attachment an the variables of self-trust and other trust. As found in her Strange Situation Test.

Four combinations of these measures of trust are likely to result from the four patterns of attachment (These are shown in Table 1_1). Secure attachments, I suggest, give rise to high levels of trust in self and others, anxious/ambivalent attachments lead to lack of trust in self but not others, avoidant attachments lead to lack of trust in others but not self and disorganised attachments lead to lack of trust in both self and others.

Problems can arise from lack of trust but we should not assume that trust in self and others is always and necessarily a good thing. Nobody is completely trustworthy and none of us can completely trust ourselves or others. It follows that secure children with high levels of trust in self and/or others may feel more secure than others but they may not be well able to recognise the degree to which doubts about ourselves and others are reasonable. Nobody is perfect and one of the lessons we all need to learn is the appropriate limit of trust.

Colin Murray Parkes

Thank you all for your excellent answers and suggestions. For the record I also came across Jonathan Clifford's work in Conversation Analysis and organizational trust, which was also very useful.

Clifton, J. (2012) ‘Doing’ trust in workplace interaction. In Mada, S. and Saftoiu, R. (Eds). Professional Communications across Languages and Cultures.  Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co.

This article may be helpful for your work:

Organizational socialization tactics and newcomer adjustment: The mediating role of role clarity and affect-based trust relationships.

Authors:

Lapointe, E, Vandenberghe, C, & Boudrias, JS

Source:

Journal of Occupational & Organizational Psychology. Sep2014, Vol. 87 Issue 3, p599-624.

Thanks for this - I'll check it out. What I've found so far, from a review of the literature, and my own analysis of organizational discourse, is that trust (and I accept that this is very much open to definitional debate) is a moving feast! Not to be taken for granted by any means.

It's not entirely the same as what you're looking for but one of my PhD students, Rebecca Clunn, did an analysis of trust within performance artists network across the globe. You can find her ResearchGate profile here:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rebecca_Clunn

That sounds absolutely fascinating. Thanks for this.

Dear Lesley

I just put an abstract - you are able to find the document and reference list via the link.

Constructing leadership by storytelling – the meaning of trust and narratives

________________________________________

Document Information:

Title: Constructing leadership by storytelling – the meaning of trust and narratives

Author(s): Tommi Auvinen, (Management and Leadership, Jyväskylä University School of Business and Economics, Jyväskylä, Finland), Iiris Aaltio, (Management and Leadership, Jyväskylä University School of Business and Economics, Jyväskylä, Finland), Kirsimarja Blomqvist, (Department of Management and International Business, Lappeenranta University of Technology, Lappeenranta, Finland)

Citation: Tommi Auvinen, Iiris Aaltio, Kirsimarja Blomqvist, (2013) "Constructing leadership by storytelling – the meaning of trust and narratives", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 34 Iss: 6, pp.496 - 514

Keywords: Interpretations, Leadership, Narrative, Story, Storytelling, Trust building

Article type: Research paper

DOI: 10.1108/LODJ-10-2011-0102 (Permanent URL)

Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Abstract: Purpose – This paper approaches manager's storytelling as a means for promoting organizational aims and for constructing leadership, and examines the intentions of managers in this process. We focus on the context of storytelling and the content of the stories told by managers in order to identify areas of influence on subordinates. Storytelling in relation to building a narrative identity for the manager is also studied.

Design/methodology/approach – This is an exploratory empirical study that draws on 13 thematic interviews with Finnish managers working in different fields. A qualitative thematic analysis is used in order to analyze the data.

Findings – As a result of the study we found that managers tell stories in order to evoke leadership characterized by six areas of influence: motivation, inspiration, defusing conflict, influencing superiors, discovering a focus and constructing trust. According to the findings, the managers see stories as an effective means of building trust between leaders and their subordinates. It was also found that managers can use stories self-reflectively and as a means of self-development.

Practical implications – Storytelling can empower leadership and support interaction with subordinates. One application of this study is informing elements of leadership development such as business education programmes for managers and future managers.

Originality/value – Narrative leadership is a highly valued but still under-researched approach to leadership. This study seeks to fill this gap in the research by providing an empirically based contribution to the field, emphasizing the intentional nature of storytelling.

And a lot of research is conducted trust & transformational leadership. I have been searching some about this area this spring. Here is the list:

Bass, B. M. 1999. Two Decades of Research and Development in Transformational Leadership. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology 8(1), 9-32.

Goodwin, V. L., Whittington, J. L., Murray, B. & Nichols, T. 2011. Moderator of Mediator? Examining the Role of Trust in the Transformational Leadership Paradigm. Journal of Managerial Issues 23(4), 409-425.

Greenwood, M. & Van Buren, H. J. 2010. Trust and Stakeholder Theory: Trustworthiness in the Organisation – Stakeholder Relationship. Journal of Business Ethics 95,425-438. DOI: 10.1007/s10551-010-0414-4

Rafferty, A. & Griffin, M. A. 2004. Dimensions of transformational leadership: Conceptual and empirical extensions. The Leadership Quarterly 15, 329-354. DOI: 10.1016/j.leaqua.2004.02.009

Zhu, W., Newman, A., Miao, Q. & Hooke, A. 2013. Revisiting the mediating role of trust in transformational effects: Do different types of trust make a difference? The Leadership Quarterly 24, 94-105. DOI: 10.1016/j.leaqua.2012.08.004

Zhu, Y. & Akhtar, S. 2014. How transformational leadership influences follower helping behavior: The role of trust and prosocial motivation. Journal of Organizational Behavior 35, 373-392. DOI: 10.1002/job.1884

With kind regards Marja Leena

This is great, Marja. Thank you for taking the time to make such a valuable and detailed response to my question. This will be very helpful in adding to my research.

Lesley, 

Trust is a main concept of interpersonal relationships in the context of Chinese culture and some researches model it as a three-dimensional latent construct, which, in some literature, is called guanxi. A key aspect of this phenomena is trust. you can have a look on the below article:

Guanxi, Trust, and Long-Term Orientation in Chinese Business Market

doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1509/jimk.13.2.28.64860

Thanks for this. It will be interesting to compare this with Schoorman et al's (2007) model which constitutes trust in perception of ability, integrity and benevolence, with trust seen as a measure of a person's willingness to take a risk in a relationship with another. Consequently trust is seen as constructed in relationships as a relational phenomenon. The only issue is that my analysis of organizational conversations (so far) identifies the constructs of integrity, risk and ability as perceptions constituted in a relation with another - but not benevolence.