Trust In Relation To Gender & To Years Of Service, Trust And Category Of Worker

Xie and Peng, in their work emphazised how corporations can repair customer trust following negative publicity. They contend that, especially in handling crisis situations, when there are distinct trusting targets needing varying levels of handling of trust repair, competence-based, benevolence-based and integrity-based trust are compulsory. Similar to the definitions used by Adams and Sartori, they posit that generally “consumers perceive these three core elements as follows:

Competence refers to the ability to realize promises, which develops when the organization holds adequate knowledge, expertise, skills, leadership, and other characteristics in related domains;

Benevolence is a sincere concern for the customers’ interests and the motivation to do good for them; and

Integrity is the adherence to a set of sound principles

The foregoing is not only to be part of the formula to guide responses to crisis situations which are public but ought also to be a catalyst to control or minimise internal public relations, policies and procedures.

In keeping with the foregoing as a sampling of works on trust in relation to the related dependent and independent variables, the demographic correlations are next to be explored for all the academic and socio-economic reasons why trust (or the lack thereof) continues to be a game changer for organizations.

Trust in Relation to Gender

Employees’ gender has been a key controlling variable in research probably because of its differentiating effects from situation to situation, and trust is no exception. The matter of employee gender is accepted as a controlling variable in research undertakings and different effects of gender on employee’s attitude and behaviour have been observed in many studies (Indartono & Chen, p.14). Feministic views aside, which might be viewed as biased, “the role of gender is viewed as a key moderator between organizational trust and job satisfaction” (Kumar, 2017, p 55-63) For instance, “in a study of gender impacts in virtual teams, Furumo and Pearson (2007) reported that females displayed higher trust than males”. That can be juxtaposed with the view that there are studies, which while pointing to a high degree of trust among females, reveal no gender differences with regard to trust (Zeffane, 2015, p.225). Notwithstanding what seems a trend is that females are more inclined to consciously choose to trust people until they prove themselves untrustworthy (Zeffaine, 2015, p. 225), the predisposition to trust may be directly linked to which gender are more inclined to risk-taking.

Given that there are varying and contending views as regards gender and trust, it might be instructive to consider how the “social role perspective on trust repair” (Frawley & Harrison, 2016) relates to the matter of trust and gender. Fawley and Harrison appear to be in agreement with Walfish et al (2013) who, in context with the view that “gender can be a relevant factor in trust repair” (Fawley & Harrison), affirm that “in the study of trust repair…men’s apologies are more effective and women face greater expectations to apologize because of status and communal role expectations (Walfish et al, 2013). This might be substantiated by the conclusion that “male employees are found to be more confident than female employees” (Tillotson & Rutherdale et al. 2002 –Indartono & Chen) There appears to be limited masculinist or feminist perspectives that can better explain the trust phenomenon among the genders but a suggestion by Spector and Jones (2014, p. 318) on factors affecting the improvement of team functioning might prove helpful.

Spector & Jones focused on whether how long either gender has been in a team and whether gender roles in jobs, and the tensions between the genders, may result in tendencies and bias of either gender being less trusting of the other .

Clearly, there are mixed reviews on the matter of gender and trust in organizations, with seemingly little or no major difference in how each gender exhibits trusting behaviour. However, “a plausible explanation is perhaps that trust alone is not the only basis…a combined effect of trust and risk-taking” (Zeffane 2015, p 226). That is for another study. It is worth considering how trust and years of service interfaces impact organizations. Whether this be more evident in terms of trust through benevolence, integrity, competence or predictability, the foregoing would have inspired the quest in research question number 2 below:

Is there a difference in how trust is viewed among genders in the organization in relation to the trust drivers of integrity, benevolence, predictability and competence?

Trust in Relation to Years of Service

There appears to be a paucity of literature as regards trust in relation to years of service. It is also noteworthy that in much of the Literature, the terms “years of service” and “tenure” seems to have been used interchangeably. However, there is the suggestion that “employees who have longer tenures are more likely to have observed or experienced breaches of managerial trust…leading to lower trust in managers” (Chang, Oneill & Travaglione, 2016. p. 249).

It is somewhat troubling that there are trends suggestive that senior executives are perceived to be less and less trustworthy. In the context, of the colloquial term of “mellowing with age” one could have assumed that the more senior members of the organization would automatically be more trusted or more trusting. However, because “there is a lack of research studying employee age and trust towards managers” (Chang & Oneill, 2016, p 249), it is yet inconclusive whether this demographic correlation is strongly influenced. That aside, as regards trust in managers in particular, there is a school of thought that “trust increases with age until middle age when it stabilizes for the remaining years (Clarke and Eisenstein 2013 and Robinson and Jackson 2001 –Chang & Oneil, p 254). Given how age of the worker and years of service could factor into workforce planning and the implications for the success factors of such an institution, that helped to form a basis for research question number 4

What is the level of satisfaction experienced based on years of service in relation to the trust drivers of integrity, benevolence, competence and predictability?

Trust and Category of Worker

According to the 2016 Edelman Trust Barometer results, one in three employees do not trust the leaders in their organizations (2016). The reliability of the above-mentioned Trust Barometer study is quite impressive. Aside from its ratings otherwise, which give credence, this researcher considers it noteworthy, given the broad cross-section in said research, where 33,000 individuals from 28 countries were surveyed. In an age when many organizations are moving towards flatter hierarchical structures, control which is less centralised, the foregoing statistic from Edelman is not encouraging. Among the predictors of job satisfaction in organizations is the climate of the interaction between supervisor and subordinates with emphasis on the need to feel the organizational glue of trust across the categories. Related to this is evidence that one of the most fundamental judgements one can make about another individual is a judgment considering his or her degree of trustworthiness. In the article First Among Equals (Marshall-White 2006…), this need for trustworthiness between categories of workers was underscored. Not only did the findings confirm “an inverse relationship between trust and academic rank” (p. xxx), and that deans were most trusted across all ranks of faculty, but another significant and noteworthy statistic was revealed. In consideration of the matter of the category of worker and trust, it was surprising to note that “tenured faculty members have less trust in their new dean than tenure-track or non-tenure track faculty members”. Notwithstanding, this finding might be linked to the reference under “tenure” and “years of service”, which suggest that longer serving employees are likely to have experienced more managerial breaches, and as such a correspondingly lower level of trust would be likely. Concurring with this is the study by De Gilder (2003) which posit that casual employees (due to having less secure employment status than permanent employees) can be expected to have lower trust in managers (Chang & Oneill, 2016 p. 249). Inasmuch as the impact of years of service has implications for organizational culture, cohesiveness and human resource allocations, the research question number 2, below was deemed worthwhile exploring:

Is there a difference in how trust is viewed across categories of workers in relation to the trust drivers of integrity, benevolence, competence and predictability.

Trust and the above mentioned demographics are being considered in this research for in order that where there are noticeable differences (positive or negative), the trust violations may be repaired. “Trust violations at work have been found to lower current trust levels, reduce trust to zero or potentially create distrust” (Lewicki & Bunker, 1996---Matthew Gill Relative Predictability….organizational trust).