ABSTRACT Trust is a central component in leadership and has been shown to be associated with employee commitment, motivation and performance. The phenomenon has been investigated at the organisational level and there have been previous studies of trust within the manager/subordinate relationship. However, research in this area within the South African environment has been limited. The present research investigates the trust displayed by employees in relation to their immediate managers and explores this relationship from a gender perspective. As women are still not well represented at management level and as perceptions of male and female managers tend to differ, the purpose of this study is to determine whether perceptions of male and female managers differ in terms of trust. The aims of the study are to assess whether there are differences with regard to the trust that employees place in managers of differing gender, as well as to assess whether there are differences in the trust displayed by employees of differing gender. The methodology of the study is based on analysis of questionnaires distributed within a large company in the retail environment. The instrument used is a Trust measure developed by Daniel McAllister (1995). Initial analyses were undertaken to establish Cronbach Alphas on both sub-scales of the Trust measure. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted to establish whether responses to the questionnaire loaded on the same subscales identified in the original McAllister study. The main analyses were then carried out using t-tests and Analysis of Covariance, in order to control for a number of potentially confounding variables in the study. The results indicate that males and females display an equal propensity to trust. In addition, male and female managers are viewed no differently in terms of trustworthiness. There are also no significant trust differences when same gender relationships were compared to cross gender relationships between managers and employees. However, manager age and the length of time that the employee knows a manager were found to be significant covariates.

Organizations often take trust for granted or ignore it, although trust is important for organizational learning and performance. Organizations must continuously learn if they are to survive, and trust facilitates individual and organizational learning. However, many authors either mention the importance of trust, or assume trust is present, and then discuss other topics as if little can be done to better understand the antecedents of trust or to improve trust in an organization. In particular, prior to this study, researchers had not explored the influence of adult attachment and disclosiveness on organizational trust. Human resources development professionals can play a vital role by helping leaders in their organizations attain strategic goals, however, no research study done previously has focused on how trust in an organization is influenced by adult attachment and disclosiveness. There is a need to better understand organizational trust because in today's global economy, an organization's ability to survive may depend in part on individual and organizational learning facilitated by trust. This study focused on a main research question "What portion of the variance in employees' perceptions of organizational trust do employees' adult attachment and disclosiveness explain?" During this research, a revised instrument for measuring organizational trust was developed. The findings of this study showed that disclosiveness did not have a statistically significant influence on organizational trust. In contrast, fearful attachment, in particular was shown to have a modest, statistically significant, and negative influence on organizational trust. / Ph. D.

Abstract From the viewpoint of Micro politics in school organizations, the purpose of this study is to investigate the relevancies between the perceptions of micro politics strategies and the levels of organizational trust among the teachers with variable backgrounds in school organizations in Pingtung County. The research method being adopted in this study is Questionnaire Survey and the research tool being utilized is ¡§The Questionnaire Survey on the Perceptions of micro politics Strategies and the Levels of Organizational Trust in School Organizations in Pingtung County¡¨, developed by the researcher himself. After reviewing relevant research documents and analyzing the results of the questionnaire survey, the conclusions of this study include: 1.There is obvious existence of micro politics strategies in the relationship operations in school organizations. 2.Among teachers and schools of different backgrounds, there are notable differences in the perceptions of micro politics strategies in school organizations. 3.Among teachers and schools of different backgrounds, there are notable differences in some aspects in the levels of organizational trust in school organizations. 4.It is shown that there is a low positive correlation between the perceptions of micro politics and the levels of organizational trust in school organizations.

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Academia and industry both report benefits to forming and maintaining collaborative research partnerships. As organizations come together to participate in these partnerships, each brings their own set of operational norms and strategic goals. Some of these norms and goals are complementary, but others can be conflicting. University-industry research partnerships (UIRPs) in particular are susceptible to conflicts for at least four major reasons: 1) there are strategic differences in the purposes of industry and academia that can result in misalignment of goals and unrealistic expectations; 2) each organization has different operational norms and discord can arise from misunderstandings among participants; 3) many UIRPs function as virtual teams and are susceptible to miscommunication that arises when face-to-face communications are missing; and, 4) UIRPs are knowledge-based organizations meaning that their primary purpose is to translate research into applicable technology that is a largely intangible process and therefore, difficult to manage. The conflicts that can arise from these misalignments, misunderstandings, miscommunications, and mismanagement can deteriorate trust and can become detrimental to a partnership. Trust has been cited as being a factor in adequately addressing conflict and reducing the potentially detrimental effects of each characteristic. This makes the need to proactively cultivate trusting relationships in UIRPs critical. The purpose of this study was to empirically investigate the role of trust in university-industry research partnership performance. The study was designed as a convergent parallel mixed methods research design utilizing an online questionnaire administered to boundary role spanning academic and industry UIRP participants for the quantitative study and interviews of the academic-industry leadership teams for the qualitative study. Following independent analyses of each study, an integrative discussion of the results of both studies more holistically described the role of trust in UIRPs. The research results enhance our understanding of the role of trust in UIRPs and suggest empirically-based guidelines for managing trust and sustaining positive, long-term UIRP performance. / Ph. D.

Aim: To understand the influence of guanxi and trust on business to business relationships in the Chinese market. Method: This study was conducted based on an inductive qualitative research method with the use of primary and secondary data. A case study, with semi-structured interview questions and open-end questionnaire, were used for the collection of primary data. In total 27employees were interviewed, 13 through an online application and 14 through an online survey. Result & Conclusions: Guanxi and trust are inseparable and complement each other when building B2B relationships. Renqing and ganqing are part of guanxi which can influence guanxi directly. Trust can be divided into interpersonal and organizational trust and both can build B2B relationships. For the creation of a long-term relationship between business partners, both guanxi and trust are essential to maintain and strengthen the relationship. Suggestion for future research: Because of the limited number of interviews and circumstances, the results of this research are based in one company and three of its business partners. All the interviewed employees work in China and are specialized in the pharmaceutical industry. Therefore, the results are difficult to be generalized, but further studies can be conducted in different fields and industries, such as government-owned companies and various business scopes to investigate if the different levels of guanxi and trust influence business relationships or performance. Contribution of the study: This study contributes to the understanding of how guanxi and trust influence relationships between business partners in China. No matter which starts the initial B2B relationship, both trust and guanxi are essential in building, maintain and strengthening B2B relationships.

A lack of research surrounding the contextual factors that either facilitate or impede the progress of developing learning capabilities in organizations suggests that researchers have yet to examine such issues. Indeed, despite a plethora of information on the trust, politics, and learning constructs, researchers have yet to explore these variables in conjunction with one another. While literature regarding organizational learning has grown substantially over the last decade, studies continue to investigate a common set of established factors that support the development of this practise. This study will explore the complex relationships between trust, politics, and learning, as well as the influence on building employee commitment and reducing turnover intentions. Results from the study provide the basis for the development of an integrative framework that illustrates how contextual factors influence organizational learning capability and in turn, the effects that developing learning capability can have on other organizational processes.

A lack of research surrounding the contextual factors that either facilitate or impede the progress of developing learning capabilities in organizations suggests that researchers have yet to examine such issues. Indeed, despite a plethora of information on the trust, politics, and learning constructs, researchers have yet to explore these variables in conjunction with one another. While literature regarding organizational learning has grown substantially over the last decade, studies continue to investigate a common set of established factors that support the development of this practise. This study will explore the complex relationships between trust, politics, and learning, as well as the influence on building employee commitment and reducing turnover intentions. Results from the study provide the basis for the development of an integrative framework that illustrates how contextual factors influence organizational learning capability and in turn, the effects that developing learning capability can have on other organizational processes.

Multi-market contact can either escalate or deescalate rivalry. Recent empirical work has revealed an inverted U-shaped relationship between multi-market contact and rivalry. These findings have lead many to suggest that mutual forbearance (MF), a switch from competition to cooperation across markets, is a natural outcome of increasing multi-market contact between two firms. Despite the relatively widespread acceptance of this suggestion, we do not have a theoretically grounded explanation for how this switch from rivalry to mutual forbearance occurs. This dissertation takes up this task. Theories of learning and trust are used as the grounding for the development of a theoretical model of the process by which multi-market rivals switch from competition to cooperation across markets. The model is tested using data from the U.S. Scheduled Passenger Airline Industry. Results support the general theoretical foundations of the model and provide new insights into the genesis of mutual forbearance.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att hitta en innovativ definition av begreppet interna kunder samt föreslå en implementeringsstrategi för en av den svenska matvarugrossisten ICAs lagerenheter. Vi har nått våra slutsatser genom kreativa studiebesök, interaktiva intervjuer, en innovativ workshop och litteraturstudier. Vi har utgått från leanfilosofin och teorier om kulturer, förtroende och kommunikation i organisationer. Inom samtliga områden har vi stött på kopplingar till inre och yttre effektivitet. Under intervjuerna upptäckte vi att ICA står inför vissa utmaningar när det gäller de anställdas förtroende, kommunikation och individualistiska tankesätt. Vi har därför försökt integrera dessa problem i vårt koncept Team Logistik inom vilket vi refererar till interna kunder och leverantörer som Centrar och Backar, med inspirationen från ishockeyrinken. Vi rekommenderar att ICA använder positiva incitament i sin implementering för att bygga upp förtroendet och kicka igång dialogen mellan avdelningarna i logistikkedjan. Målet med konceptet är att höja den inre och yttre effektiviteten. / This paper aims to come up with an innovative definition of the internal customer construct as well as an implementation strategy for a logistics unit of the Swedish grocery wholesaler ICA. We have reached our conclusions through creative study visits, interactive interviews, an innovative workshop, and by reading up on research. We have focused on lean management and theories about organizational culture, trust and communication and found connections to efficiency and effectiveness in all fields. During our interviews we discovered that ICA was facing some challenges concerning trust, communication and an individualistic mindset among the workers. We therefore tried to incorporate these problems into our concept Team Logistics in which the internal customers and suppliers are referred to as Centers and Backs, all in line with our ice hockey approach. As for the implementation strategy we recommend ICA to use positive incentives to build trust and boost the dialogue between in-chain departments. The goal is for the concept to increase efficiency and effectiveness.