Research On Characteristics And The Relationship Between Civil Servants’ Organizational Trust And Silence

Organizational trust means the degree of one’s support and reliance to co-workers,leaders and the whole organization in the specific organization. On the one hand,organizational trust is the appearance of organizational recognition and the sense ofbelonging; on the other hand, it may reduce the creative consciousness and thefrequencies of communications because of excessive trust. Organizational silence meansthe member chooses to be silent for some reason, who should have put forward his ownopinions or suggestions on the existed problems and the development of an organizationbased on his experience. The organizational silence is so ordinary that it would blockthe information communication and reduce the efficiency of organizational decision,which is disadvantaged for the learning and innovation of one organization. So as to thesingle member, organizational silence would promote one’s cognitive dissonance andreduce the motivation and satisfaction of work, which would finally influence theworking performance. As the innovator and executor of public policies and the publicservant, civil servants’ silence would lead to giant negative effects and endanger thesocial public benefits. However, the current studies gave more focus on enterpriseemployees while put less attention to the civil servants’ silence. Considering of thenormal characters of civil servants’ being meticulousness and the specific culture ofsilence in China, this research studies on the characteristics and the relationship of civilservants’ organizational trust and silence in the new era, which is difference from theformal studies.In this complicated and changeable social context, there are variables of factorswhich may influence civil servants’ organizational silence, such as the personalcharacteristics, the co-workers, the leaders and the organizational circumstances. Willthe organizational trust influence the organizational silence? What will the level of it bewhen the organizational trust is raised?According to the above questions, this study gave a comparable systematicresearch on the civil servants’ organizational trust, organizational silence and therelationship between them by the means of document analysis, questionnaireinvestigation and statistical analysis. This study mainly includes three parts: the civilservants’ organizational trust and organizational silence questionnaire development, thecommon features and variation analysis between dimensions of them, the relationship between the civil servants’ organizational trust and silence.The conclusions of the study are in the followings:(1) Civil servants’ organizational trust includes four factors, which are leaders’quality trust, co-workers’ relation trust, leaders’ behavior trust, organizational safetytrust; Civil servants’ organizational silence includes four factors, which are ignoresilence, acquiesce silence, prosocial silence, defense silence. The civil servants’organizational trust questionnaire and the civil servants’ organizational silencequestionnaire developed by this study has a high reliability and validity, which can beused as an stable and efficient tool to measure civil servants’ organizational trust andcivil servants’ organizational silence..(2) The scores of civil servants’ organizational trust and its four factors are in therelatively high level, while the score of co-workers’ relation trust is higher, the scores ofleaders’ quality trust and organizational safety trust are lower (compared with score oforganizational trust questionnaire); The scores of civil servants’ organizational silenceand its four factors are in the average level, while the scores of prosocial silence andacquiesce silence are higher(compared with score of organizational silencequestionnaire), the score of defense silence is lower.(3) There is no significant difference between both different genders and ages ofcivil servants, in the compare of civil servants with different education levels, the oneswith graduate academic or above gain significantly higher scores, in the compare ofcivil servants with different working years, the ones with over8years’ workingexperience get higher scores significantly than the ones who have working for6to8years on the dimension of organizational safety trust, in the compare of civil servantswith different position classes, the department level ones have higher scoressignificantly, the section member level ones get higher scores significantly than thedeputy section level ones on leaders’ behavior trust dimension; There is no significantdifference between different genders, academics and working experience of civilservants, in the compare of civil servants of different ages, the ones aged over40gethigher scores significantly, in the compare of civil servants with different positionclasses, the department level ones get higher scores significantly, the principle sectionlevel ones get higher scores significantly on the total organizational silence score andthe defense silence dimension.(4) The civil servants’ organizational trust questionnaire and the three dimensionsof co-workers’ relation trust, leaders’ behavior trust and organizational safety trust are all significantly related to the civil servants’ organizational silence questionnaire and itsfour dimensions positively, which are all low correlation; the leaders’ quality trustdimension has a positive, low correlation to the civil servants’ organizational silencequestionnaire and its three dimensions of ignore silence, defense silence and prosocialsilence, through the single factor linear regression analysis, it is found that civilservants’ trust and its four dimensions have significantly positive prediction effects,while the co-workers’ relation trust is the most significantly one; Civil servants’interpersonal trust and system trust are positively related to the negative silence,positive silence and organizational silence significantly, which are all low correlation,through the stepwise regression analysis, it is found that interpersonal trust has asignificant positive prediction effect on the organizational silence; Civil servants’leaders’ trust, co-workers’ trust and system trust are all positively related to the negativesilence, positive silence and organizational silence significantly, which are all lowcorrelation; through the stepwise regression analysis, it is found that co-workers’ has asignificant positive prediction effect on the organizational silence.