Developing and maintaining trust in organisations

The trend of trust in recent times concerned enormous consideration in organisational research and socio-economic hypothesis. Without a certain level of trust, it is almost not possible to set up or sustain effectively organisational relations over a extended period of time. Trust has become a focus of increasing significance amongst academicians and a apprehension inside organisational communities. For example, Rankin (1998) has study the important of building trust as the essential ingredient in partnering to improve business results. The paper of Polities (2003) offers a study on the connecting between trust and knowledge management and its implication for team performance. While, Costa (2003) make a researched about work team trust and effectiveness.

Higher trust within an organisation increases activity and critical thinking, thus trust becomes the necessary factors for flexible and adaptive work environments. Directly and indirectly trust is related to individual group and overall organisation performance. In addition, trust is the building block for gaining the respect among the staff, creating positive work relationships within the work team, and enabling staff to handle stress and uncertainty in the work environment.

When trust is present, the goals are relatively congruent where there is the room for honest disagreement and essential for innovation and growth. When trust absent, innovation suffers and costs rise exponentially (Tracy & Morin, 2002). That is why trust is important in managing the organisation. Trust as a capital in organisation. It is useful for employee and leader in dealing with the activities in the organisation.

The creation of a feeling of mutual trust, respect and understanding and the ability of the team to deal with the inevitable conflicts that occur in any group situation are key factors in team development. As according to Willard (1999), the presence of trust is essential to the success of any team because it is trust that is the glue that holds a team together. Trust is measured in degree of safety and security that members feel within the organisation and toward other members of the team. Maximum performance levels can only be reached when there is a strong supply of trust among team members because team members with a high level of trust are more willing to rely upon each other.

This research is about the personality dimensions from leadership and managerial dimensions toward trust. The research sees how both of dimensions; personality and managerial practices will influence the degree of trust in a person via employee performance. In management, there are consists of four functions; planning, organising, leading and controlling. Leading is the process of directing and influencing the task related activities of group members or an entire organisation (Stoner, Freeman, & Gilbert, 1995).

Leading (Stoner, 1995) involves directing, influencing and motivating employees to perform essential tasks. Relationship and time are central to leading activities (Stoner, 1995). That why in building the good relation, they must be trust each other, neither top management nor lower level of management.

From the theory of Hendry Mintzberg defined three types of managerial roles. There are interpersonal roles, informational roles and decisional roles. The leader must be versatile when it comes to dealing with human relationship (Stoner, 1995).

O’Brien (2001) has defined trust as confidence in the outcome of a situation. It’s a simple but powerful assumption, which sustains a relationship over time. It’s also an expectation about the positive action of other people, without be able to influences or monitor the outcome. To put it another way, it is an expectation of positive behaviour for action of importance, which is a form of confidences based on the consistency of feeling.

Earle and Cvetkovich (1995), defined trust is the ‘simplifying strategies that enables individuals to adapt to complex social environment, and thereby benefits from increased opportunities’. While, Gambetta (1988), interpret trust is particularly relevant in conditions of ignorance or uncertainty with respect to unknown or unknowable actions of others. Costa (2003), has defined as a multi-component variable with distinct but related dimensions that include propensity to trust, perceived trustworthiness, co-operative and lack of monitoring behaviour.

According to McShane and Van Glinow (2003), trust means putting faith in the other person or group. It is also a reciprocal activity to receive trust, and must demonstrate struts. Trust is important to organisational commitment because it touches the heart of the employment relationship. Employees identify with and feel obliged to work for and organisation only when they trust its leaders.

Webster has defined trust as an assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something and one in who confidence is placed. Trust also a charge or duty imposed in faith or confidence or as a condition of some relationship. It is something committed or entrusted to one, to be use or cared for in the interest of another (Quote in Marshall, 2000).

Based on the research done by Rankin (1998) on Toronto and London people, he found that the London people had defined trust as communication completed in a timely way, communication to an individual or group that the commitment completed, less criticism and gossip, group co-operation, past history versus current behaviour. While, for Toronto people trust mean a shared accountability for open, honest, timely communication based on mutual respects, real listening and keeping own word, and they measured trust by people doing what they said they would do within their control, result from joint problem solving, issued being discussed and quality of the work captured.

Problem Statement

There are some evidences on the previous study about maintaining trust. The success of an organisation will be depended on the ability of the staffs work together to attain commonly held objective. When followers trust the leader, they are willing to be vulnerable to the leader’s action-confident that their rights and interest will not be abused (Robbin, 2003). In addition, people are unlikely to look up to or follow someone whom they are perceive as dishonest or who is likely to take advantage of them. Nowadays, organisations become increasingly more complex, their team leaders must be concerned with developing and maintaining their teams for global competition. Trust is one of the factors that contribute to the success of a team. Thus, the research will be conducted on developing and maintaining trust in an organisation. The research will be conducted to know the relationship between leader/manager personality and managerial practices act by leader with the employee performance when employee trusting leader/manager in an organisation.

Objectives of the Research

General objective

General objective for this research is to know the relationship between personality and managerial practices exercised by leader or manager with employee performance in an organisation.

Specific objectives

a) To discover, the personality dimension and managerial dimension can contributes to trust between employees and leader in an organisation.

b) To identify, the relationship between personality and employee performance when they trust the manager.

c) To identify the relationship between managerial and employee performance when they trust the manager.

d) To identify the relationship between personality and managerial dimension.

Scope of the Research

The research will be done with regard to the study on the developing and maintaining trust in human. I want to study the relationship between the leader and manager personality, managerial dimensions and how the employee will act when they trust the leader and manager. I will select one organisation to identify the degree of personality (Big Five Model) and managerial dimensions applied by leader and manager in the organisation. I will choose China Telecom for the research.

Significance of the Research

Literature Review

This sections aims at discussing the previous study related to the research. Literature review is the documentation of a comprehensive review of the published and unpublished work form secondary sources of data in area of specific interest to the researcher (Sekaran, 2000).

Definition of trust

Various definition of trust has emerged based on the individual research disciplinary focus, for instance: Belief that those on whom we depend will meet our expectation of them (Shaw, 1997).

There is inspiring trust in the leader and what he/she is trying to accomplish as well as the leader trusting other people to do what needs to be done. Leaders need to be congruent and ethical in word and deed (Charlton, 2000).

The willingness of the party to be vulnerable to them actions of another party based on the expectation that other will perform a particular action important to trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party (Mayer, Davis, &

Schoorman, 1993).

Reciprocal faith in others’ intention and behaviour (Kreitner & Kinicbi, 1995). Those definitions show that trust is a dynamic phenomenon that depends on the interplay of various factor that might affect the building of a model of trust.

Definition of leadership

Leadership can be defined as the ability to influence a group toward the achievement of a vision or set of goal (Robbins & Judge, 2007). Leadership is the process of influencing people and providing an environment for them to achieve team or organisational objectives (McShane & Von Glinow, 2000).

Leadership is the exercise of influence by one member of a group or organisation over other members to help the group or organisation achieve its goals (George & Jones, 1999).

Hersey, Blanchard and Johnson (1996) cited according to Terry leadership is the activity of influencing people to strive willingly for group objectives.

Hersey et al., (1996) cited from Robert Tannenbaum, Irving R. Weschler, and Fred Massarik define leadership as interpersonal influence exercised in a situation and directed, through the communication process, toward the attainment of a specialised goal or goals.

Hersey et al., (1996) cited from Harold Koontz and Cyril O’Donnell state that leadership is influencing people to follow in the achievement of a common goal.

From Ivencevich and Matterson (1999) defined leadership is using influence in an organisational setting or situation, producing effects that are meaningful and have a direct impact on accomplishing challenging goals.

Independent variable

First under the independent variable is about the personality. Personality is an important determinant of how person thinks feels and behaved, it is helpful to distinguish between different types of personality (George & Jones, 1999). In addition, a trait is a specific component of personality that describes particular tendencies a person has a feel, think, and act in certain ways. Personality refers to the relatively stable pattern of behaviours and consistent internal states that explain a person’s behavioural tendencies (McShane & Von Glinow, 2000). Personality has both internal and external elements. The external traits are observable behaviours that rely on to identify someone’s personality (McShane & Von Glinow, 2000).

Personality will be measure using the ‘Big Five Model’. The big five consists of agreeableness, extroversion, emotional stability or neuroticism, conscientiousness and resourcefulness or openness to experience.

Martins, Watkins, Von & De Beer, (1997) stated that the “big five” personality can be described:

Conscientiousness: This includes traits such as being organised and hardworking as well as dependable, trustworthy and responsible. The opposite would be carelessness or irresponsibility.

Agreeableness: This reflects being liked, courteous, good-natured, cooperative, forgiving and soft-hearted. The opposite pole would be cold, rude, unkind and independent.

Emotional stability: This reflects the absence of anxiety, depression, anger, worry and insecurity. The opposite pole is called neuroticism.

Resourcefulness (openness to experience): This reflects imaginative, creativeness, broad-mindedness and intelligence. The opposite pole is narrow-mindedness, unimaginative and conventionality.

Extroversion: This reflects sociability, cheerfulness, talkativeness and activeness. The opposite dimensions are introverted, quiet, shy and reserved.

Extroversion or positive affectivity is a personality trait that predisposes individuals to experience positive emotional states and feel good about themselves and about the world around them. Extraverts-people in high on the extraversion scale- tend to be sociable, affectionate, and friendly. Introverts- people low on the extraversion scale are less likely to experience positive emotional states and have fewer social interactions with others. At work, extraverts are likely than introverts to experience positive moods, be satisfied with their jobs, and generally feel about the organisation and those around them. Extraverts also are more likely to enjoy socialising with their co-workers. They may do particularly well in job requiring frequent interaction (George & Jones, 1999).

Neuroticism is a contrast from extraversion. Neuroticism is under the emotional stability. Neuroticism or affectivity reflects people’s tendency to experience negative emotional states, feel distressed and generally view themselves and the world around them negatively (George & Jones, 1999). In addition, individuals high on neuroticism are more likely than individuals low on neuroticism to experience negative emotions and stress over time and across situations. Individuals who are high on neuroticism are more likely to experience to negative moods at work, feel stressed and generally have a negative orientation toward the work situation. Individuals high on neuroticism are sometimes more critical of themselves and their performance than are people low on neuroticism. That tendency may propel them to improve their performance, so they may be particularly proficient in situations, such as quality control, that require critical thinking and evaluation. Individual on high neuroticism may also exert a needed sobering influence in group decision making by playing devil’s advocate and pointing out the negative aspects of a proposed decision. Individuals low on neuroticism do not tend to experience negative emotions are not as critical and pessimistic as their high-neuroticism counterparts (George & Jones, 1999).

Agreeableness is the trait that captures the distinction between individuals who get along well with other people and those who do not. Likability in general and the ability to care for others and to be affectionate, characterise individuals who are high on agreeableness. Individual’s lows on agreeableness are antagonistic, mistrustful, unsympathetic, uncooperative and rude. A low measure of agreeableness might be an advantage in jobs that require a person to be somewhat antagonistic such as a bill collector. Agreeable individuals generally are easy to get along with and are “team players”. Agreeableness can be an asset in jobs that hinge on developing good relationships with other people (George & Jones, 1999).

Conscientiousness is the extent to which individual is careful, scrupulous, and persevering. Individuals high on conscientiousness are organised and have lot self-discipline. Conscientiousness is important in organisation situations and has been found to be a good predictor of performance in many jobs in a wide variety of organisations (George & Jones, 1999).

Openness to experience captures the extent to which an individual is original, open to a wide variety of stimuli, has broad interests and is willing to take risks as opposed to being narrow-minded and cautious. For jobs that change frequently, require innovation, or involve considerable risk, individuals who are open to experience may have advantage. For openness to experience to be translated into creative and innovative behaviour in the organisation, however the organisation must remove obstacles to innovations (George & Jones, 1999).

Research Methodology

Research design is a master plan for researcher in developing the methods and procedures for collecting and analysing the required information in completing the study. The purpose of this research is to know the relationship between the personality and the managerial practices with the employee performance when the leaders are trusting. The intention of this research is to find out the relationship between leader/manager and employee when trust elements exist in relationship. Survey design or questionnaires will be used in order to achieve the purpose of the research. The pilot test will be carried out to test the effectiveness of the questionnaire between colleagues to ensure that the respondents will understand when answering the entire question.

Research Instrument

For this research, questionnaire will be designed in order to collect the data. The questions are easy and the respondents are able to understand.

Treatment of data

The data will be analysed by using the SPSS II (Statistical Package for Social Science) software. The data will be analysed by using the frequency distribution for the demographic factors, correlations to know the relationship between the personality, managerial practices by leader/manager and employee performance when they are trusting leader/manager and one-way ANOVA for hypothesis testing.

Questionnaires Design

Structured questionnaire will be used in research. The questionnaire will be design based on the information from the literature. The questionnaires will be divided into two sections as follows:

Section A will consist of questions to get the personal information.

Section B will consist of question that could determine the effectiveness of developing and maintaining trust in the organisation based on the dimension of ‘Big Five Model’ personality and managerial practices via the employee performance. Under this section, it will be divided into three tables first table about the personality aspects, second about the managerial practices and the last table about the employee performance to measure of effectiveness trust.

Section A will be using a nominal scale. Nominal scale allows the researcher to assign subjects to certain categories and group (Cavana et al., 2001). For the section B, the Likert scale will be designed to examine how strongly subjects agree and disagree with statements on five point scale (Cavana et al., 2001)

1- Strongly disagreed

2- Disagreed

3- Moderated

4- Agreed

5- Strongly agreed

Under section A, there will be five questions about the demographic or respondent information. The questions will be about the gender, age, race, education level and working experience.

Under section B, the respondents will be required to answer three subsection where under the personality, there will be five dimensions; agreeableness, extroversion, emotional stability, conscientiousness, and resourcefulness. For the managerial practices; there will be four aspects; credibility, team management, information sharing, and work support and the last will be for the effectiveness trust, it will be measure via the employee’s performance and it will have five items under this subsection.