The impact of trust in leadership on officer commitment and intention to leave military service in the United States Air Force

Trust is an increasingly important concept in leading modern organizations. High trust environments result in increased teamwork, reduced conflict, improved performance, increased organizational citizenship, and improved leader effectiveness. The purpose of this study was to explore organizational trust in Air Force captains based on the theoretical work of Sashkin. Organizational trust is an employee's confidence in an organization through its agents to be fair, ethical, and non-threatening in their intentions and actions. Building on this definition Sashkin believes that organizational trust can be measured by the behaviors of senior leaders. Sashkin defines trust as the confidence employees feel toward management and the degree to which they believe what management tells them. Using this definition of organizational trust, this research measures organizational trust in a sample of 285 Air Force captains attending Squadron Officers School. The research participants completed a survey battery including the Management Behavior Climate Assessment, Affective, Continuous, and Normative Commitment Scales, and Intent to Leave Survey. Findings from this study include the following: (a) there is a statistically significant relationship between organizational trust and affective and normative commitment, (b) there is a statistically significant and inverse relationship between affective and normative commitment and intent to leave military service, and, (c) there is a statistically significant and inverse relationship between trust in leadership and intent to leave military service.