A new method for assessing Cook and Wall's informal theory of organizational trust: A Coast Guard sample

Management and organizational behavior theories have identified organizational trust as a factor that leads to higher productivity and effectiveness in an organization. Research has found organizational trust is directly related to the quality of work life and to the productivity of an organization.; The purpose of this study is to develop a heuristic conceptualization--in the form of an influence diagram--that can be used by managers in assessing the level of organizational trust. "Trust" has many definitions and is subject to varying interpretations. In ordinary language, trust may be the extent to which one is willing to ascribe good intentions to and feel comfortable in the words and actions of others. In order to model organizational trust--in the form of an influence diagram--operational definitions are needed. Existing operational definitions, developed in 1980 by Cook and Wall, are used in defining the variables according to measurable scales. In their approach, organizational trust consists of three measurable components: interpersonal trust at work, organizational commitment, and personal needs of non-fulfillment (the degree of fulfillment of personal needs). Classical psychometrics have shown how these elements combine to create organizational trust. The measurable scales may be assessed through an employee questionnaire. A survey of Coast Guard employees was used to assess organizational trust in the Coast Guard and compare the results derived from this qualitative conceptualization with the results achieved in previous work that relied on classical psychometrics. What has been missing is an intuitive framework emphasizing the relationships among the scales, in effect a knowledge map of organizational trust for managers to use.; This research shows that an influence diagram can be constructed as a useful model for assessing organizational trust. The results of applying this technique validate earlier researchers' conclusions based on classical psychometrics. In addition, the findings indicate a sequential network among the three primary scales that result in organizational trust: personal needs of nonfulfillment are the first level, followed by organizational commitment through interpersonal trust at work to reach organizational trust.