Lawrence D. Mankin

Organizational Trust, Trust in the Chief Executive and Work Satisfaction

This article examines the interrelationships among employee trust in the chief executive of the organization, trust in the organization and work satisfaction. These three concepts capture the essential experience of the employees work life, but their interrelationships have been more often a subject for speculation than for research. Employees in one government organization and one manufacturing firm offered their visions of critical features in managerial trust and organizational trust. With respect to defining chief executive trust, employees emphasized the managers employee orientation, honesty, ability, fairness and forthrightness. Critical features that employees used to define organizational trust included the social significance of organizational mission, quality of output, and the organizations persistence beyond the human lifespan. Trust in the chief executive and organizational trust were found to be uncorrelated with one another, as expected from the conceptual review. Instead, these variables were conceptually linked through their individual relationships with employee work satisfaction.

Understanding Employee Trust in Management: Conceptual Clarification and Correlates

Employee trust is an integral part of the organizational behavior lexicon, but professional use seems to employ different referents for the trust invested. The goal here is to focus on a specific referent for trust — managers — and examine the extent to which trust varies among different levels of management. The data analyzed come from a larger study of two organizations, a large municipal fire department and a private manufacturing company. Three classes of variables are tested as a model of antecedent correlates of managerial trust: characteristics of the trustee (gender, ethnicity, years worked under the manager), characteristics of the organization (layoffs, managerial turnover), and characteristics of the manager (technical expertise and credibility). Although there were differences by manager (supervisor vs. CEO) and between the organizations, regression analyses indicate that overall the model fits the data well.

Preparing for the Unthinkable: Managers, Terrorism and the HRM Function

Particularly since the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, there has been renewed interest in emergency planning in both the private and public sectors. Government emergency planning tends to be conducted by specialized agencies and offices, such as fire departments, police departments or emergency management. Traditionally, most of this planning is oriented toward protecting the public and public structures. Selectively over the decades, some of this planning was oriented toward insuring that government could continue to function following a disaster. At the federal level during the Cold War, much attention was given to the problem of post-nuclear attack government functioning under the rubric of “government continuity.” In the past decade, private sector businesses have begun to plan for business continuity following a variety of disasters including terrorist attacks. In spite of sporadic research indicating that local governments are particularly vulnerable, little attention has been paid to planning for government continuity following disasters or terrorism. This paper reviews the literature on historic disasters and terrorist events to establish the level of danger faced by local government. Then six key planning measures for insuring post-emergency operations are reviewed. Data are presented from a large southwestern U.S. city on levels of municipal department emergency preparedness. The paper closes with a discussion of how human resources departments may be mobilized to make critical and unique contributions to local government preparations for terrorism and disasters.

Commentary: Terrorism Challenges for Human Resource Management

“September 11, 2001, changed the world” has been repeated many times. The U.S. government, too, has changed immensely and will continue to evolve a security conscience and response capacity for yea...“September 11, 2001, changed the world” has been repeated many times. The U.S. government, too, has changed immensely and will continue to evolve a security conscience and response capacity for years to come. This article addresses the situation from the standpoint of human resource management. We use public opinion poll data to document the changing opinions of individuals and changes in the environment in which public organizations operate. The literature on human response to natural and technological disasters is reviewed to glean information on how people respond to extreme levels of stress. This information is systematized and extrapolated to arrive at a series of behaviors that can be reasonably expected from employees exposed to terrorist incidents. Finally, the discussion closes with an examination of the Employee Assistance Program as locus of expertise for mitigating problematic employee reactions to terrorist incidents.

Executive Directors of Local Arts Agencies: Who Are They?

ith approximately 4,000 local arts agencies (LAAs) in the United States, it is surprising that so little has appeared about them in scholarly publications. This is even more unusual when one considers the level of financial support provided to LAAs. For 2005, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) received an appropriation of

The Administration of Public Art on State University Campuses

121 million, and for the same year, the state arts agencies in the aggregate received an appropriation of

The National Government and the Arts: Impressions from the State and Jurisdictional Arts Agencies

294 million and the local arts agencies in the aggregate received an appropriation estimated at

Terrorism Challenges for Human Resource Management

711 million (Americans for the Arts 2005). For some time now, the LAAs have received considerably more funding than the NEA and the

Gearing Up for Community Service: Overcoming Informational Barriers

ublic art can serve multiple purposes for a university campus, including P (a) embodying and reflecting the intellectual and creative mission of the institution, (b) enhancing the aesthetics of a campus, (c) fostering campus community spirit, and (6) memorializing individuals or events significant to the institutions history. Given these purposes and the significance public art can have for a campus, it is appropriate to pause and consider the approaches universities take in administering public art programs on their campuses. The issues considered in this study include sources of funding public art, the decision structure used in acquiring public art, and the oversight and maintenance of public art after it is installed. Universities across the nation have gathered an impressive collection of public art, yet as a whole it has not been catalogued nor has its value appraised. Furthermore, university practices vary on the acquisition and maintenance of public art. Uniform standards do not exist; however, some patterns of practice are discernible among institutions of higher education. This study began as an effort to help Arizona State University place the administration of its public art program into a broader context as it considered refinements in its operations. During the study it became apparent that little has been written on the administration of public art at state universitieswhere many such works reside-and that institutions of higher education rarely communicate on the issue. A number of institutions are currently con-

The National Endowment for the Arts: The Biddle Years and After

ixty-six years prior to the establishment of the National Endowment for S the Arts (NEA) in 1965, Utah established the first state arts agency. Indeed nine states would establish state arts agencies prior to the establishment of the NEA, and twelve more would do so by the end of 1965. The federal system, one of the features of which is that states could serve as laboratories for policy innovation, provided the opportunity for states to innovate in the arts policy arena, in which the national government had a significant but different presence (e.g., copyright protection, tax exemptions and deductions, and special postal rates for literary journals). Illustrative of a state’s ability to develop opportunities, the New York State Council on the Arts introduced the first state arts grant program prior to the establishment of the NEA (Netzer 1978, 80). For the most part, little state funding was appropriated to the preNEA arts agencies; however, the state initiatives planted the seeds for further growth and established the legitimacy of a state government role in the arts in those states, even if a very limited one.