TrustWithin Chinese Organizations

Trust issues have been raised dramatically and draw much concern in China in recent years. Inorganization level, corporate governance reform of the State-owned enterprises and theinstitutional transition of the private enterprises also encounter trust pitfalls. The mechanism oftrust processes and how to re-build trust in Chinese organizations is of great concern amongresearchers. This paper aims to analyze Chinese organizational process from the perspective oftrust.The study distinguished from the two-dimensional mechanism of trust by German sociologist N.Luhmann–system trust and personal trust-, to analyze the factors of trust in organizations and thedifference effect between different ownerships. System trust corresponds to the field oforganizational symbols, the product of the completeness of organization forms. The study analyzessystem trust with means of organizational symbols integration: organization formalization,organizations ceremony, organizational identity, and organizational commitment. Personal trust isconstructed on the basis of familiarity; it’s based on personal experience and interaction. Personaltrust is regarded as the organization’s field of action, reflecting the organizational capacity to act.In this study, the concept of vertical trust was introduced, as the connection and channel betweensystem trust and personal trust. The differences of the trust mechanism between differentownership types are also analyzed. Vertical trust has a special significance in the context ofChinese organization culture---as recognized, paternalistic style of leadership is one of the mainfeatures of Chinese organizations.In this paper, we develop multiple quantitative models based on the data came from a nationalscale sample survey. In addition to the commonly used descriptive statistical indicators, mainlycomprising: confirmatory factor analysis to verify the reliability of the measurement model; linearregression model: determine factors of a dependent variable; Path model: used to analyze therelationships within multiple regressions. Multi-group comparison is deployed as the analysisstrategy to determine the difference of a significant factor between the different groups, which canhelp to determine whether the trust mechanism is the same, and whether the effect of the trustmechanism is the same between different types of ownership. The study found that under differentownerships, the same institutional arrangements would manifest different path of trust.This study strives to be innovative and breakthrough in the following areas based on the referenceand inherited the results of other researches:1, Develop the measurement of trust concepts, in particular, the measurement of institutionaltrust;2, Concern about the interaction between the different trust mechanisms, so as to explore thepath of rebuilding trust, rather than the typological distinguish of trust concepts.3, Analysis of the differences of trust mechanisms within different morphologies, inparticular, the different types of ownership.