Trust and organizational effectiveness

It is fairly well agreed that organizations require a degree of trust among the participants in order for the organization to function at all. But what does this mean? How much trust is needed? How is trust cultivated among participants? And what are the mechanisms through which trust enhances organizational effectiveness?

The minimal requirements of cooperation presuppose a certain level of trust. As A plans and undertakes a sequence of actions designed to bring about Y, his or her efforts must rely upon the coordination promised by other actors. If A does not have a sufficiently high level of confidence in B's assurances and compliance, then he will be rationally compelled to choose another series of actions. If Larry Bird didn't have trust in his teammate Dennis Johnson, the famous steal would not have happened.

First, what do we mean by trust in the current context? Each actor in an organization or group has intentions, engages in behavior, and communicates with other actors. Part of communication is often in the form of sharing information and agreeing upon a plan of coordinated action. Agreeing upon a plan in turn often requires statements and commitments from various actors about the future actions they will take. Trust is the circumstance that permits others to rely upon those statements and commitments. We might say, then, that A trusts B just in case --

• A believes that when B asserts P, this is an honest expression of B's beliefs.
• A believes that when B says he/she will do X, this is an honest commitment on B's part and B will carry it out (absent extraordinary reasons to the contrary).
• A believes that when B asserts that his/her actions will be guided by his best understanding of the purposes and goals of the organization, this is a truthful expression.
• A believes that B's future actions, observed and unobserved, will be consistent with his/her avowals of intentions, values, and commitments.

So what are some reasons why mistrust might rear its ugly head between actors in an organization? Why might A fail to trust B?

• A may believe that B's private interests are driving B's actions (rather than adherence to prior commitments and values).
• A may believe that B suffers from weakness of the will, an inability to carry out his honest intentions.
• A may believe that B manipulates his statements of fact to suit his private interests.
• Or less dramatically: A may not have high confidence in these features of B's behavior.
• B may have no real interest or intention in behaving in a truthful way.

And what features of organizational life and practice might be expected to either enhance inter-personal trust or to undermine it?

Trust is enhanced by individuals having the opportunity to get acquainted with their collaborators in a more personal way -- to see from non-organizational contexts that they are generally well intentioned; that they make serious efforts to live up to their stated intentions and commitments; and that they are generally honest. So perhaps there is a rationale for the bonding exercises that many companies undertake for their workers.

Likewise, trust is enhanced by the presence of a shared and practiced commitment to the value of trustworthiness. An organization itself can enhance trust in its participants by performing the actions that its participants expect the organization to perform. For example, an organization that abruptly and without consultation ends an important employee benefit undermines trust in the employees that the organization has their best interests at heart. This abrogation of prior obligations may in turn lead individuals to behave in a less trustworthy way, and lead others to have lower levels of trust in each other.

How does enhancing trust have the promise of bringing about higher levels of organizational effectiveness? Fundamentally this comes down to the question of the value of teamwork and the burden of unnecessary transaction costs. If every expense report requires investigation, the amount of resources spent on accountants will be much greater than a situation where only the outlying reports are questioned. If each vice president needs to defend him or herself against the possibility that another vice president is conspiring against him, then less time and energy are available to do the work of the organization. If the CEO doesn't have high confidence that her executive team will work wholeheartedly to bring about a successful implementation of a risky investment, then the CEO will choose less risky investments.

In other words, trust is crucial for collaboration and teamwork. And an organization that manages to help to cultivate a high level of trust among its participants is likely to perform better than one that depends primarily on supervision and enforcement.

(See Fergus Lyon, Handbook of Research Methods on Trust: Second Edition (Handbooks of Research Methods in Management series) for recent empirical work on trust.)