Rosalind Searle

The development of trust and distrust in a merger

This paper explores the development and maintenance of trust and distrust in an organization undergoing a merger. Using a longitudinal study we examined the sense‐making of retained staff by comparing two sets of in‐depth interviews with six survivors and detailed field notes. Four central themes were identified revealing differences between trust and distrust. The themes included: the importance of perceived changes to the psychological contract, organizational justice, reputations of individuals and risk management. By analysing the sense‐making the need for congruence between what was done and how it was done was revealed. As distrust grew staff balanced this disequilibrium through their trust in the familiar, however, this finding calls into question the role of rationality as the basis for risk management. We discuss the implications of these findings for the successful management of mergers.

Supporting Innovation through HR Policy: Evidence from the UK

This paper focuses on the relationship between the importance of innovation for organizations and their human resources policy. Drawing on survey findings, we examine the coherence of organizations’ utilization of HR recruitment, training and performance management policies to support and enhance firms’ innovation performance. Through a social–psychological perspective, we situate our findings in two diverse areas: the psychological literature, exploring the measurement of innovation, and second, with regard to the internal (with each other) and external (with broader organizational objectives) integration of distinct HR policy elements. Our surveyed organizations indicate that, whilst attaching importance to innovation, they fail to consistently translate this importance into coherent HR policies. Typically, HR policy rewarded non-managerial employees for innovation, whilst managerial staff were expected to do so as a matter of course. This inconsistency is one source of resistance which blocks the generation of new ideas, and their implementation, organization-wide.

Editorial: Trust and HRM: Current insights and future directions

Over the last 20 years, HRM has been identified as one of the most influential organisational contexts in which to explore trust, and yet scholars have been slow to look systematically at both the systems and practices that underlie this assertion. Organisations make choices regarding both the design and implementation of HRM policies and practices, with research considering the impact on trust for both key single policy areas and bundles of policies. We outline the previous dominance on teleological approaches compared with a dearth of more deontological perspectives which would highlight moral and ethical considerations implicit in definitions of trustworthiness. We review the contribution of five new articles to further our understanding of trust and HRM and identify future research and practice agendas.

A qualitative meta-analysis of trust in supervisor-subordinate relationships

Purpose – Interpersonal trust is often considered as the “glue” that binds supervisors together with their subordinates, and creates a positive organisational climate. The purpose of this paper is to investigate factors affecting subordinates’ trust to their supervisor, and the consequences of such a trusting relationship. Design/methodology/approach – The authors conducted a qualitative meta-analysis of the trust literature between 1995 and 2011, to identify 73 articles and review 37 theoretical propositions, 139 significant model parameters and 58 further empirical findings. Findings – Four distinct clusters of trust antecedents are found: supervisor attributes; subordinate attributes; interpersonal processes and organisational characteristics. Similarly, the authors identify three categories of trust consequences: subordinates’ work behaviour; subordinates’ attitude towards the supervisor; and organisational level effects. Research limitations/implications – The authors find a bias towards studying sup...

New technology: the potential impact of surveillance techniques in recruitment practices

Purpose – To outline changes in selection attraction, search and assessment processes and examine and compare, using a surveillance perspective, the privacy and equity issues for applicants, organisations and testers.Design/methodology/approach – The paper begins by reviewing briefly the role of surveillance and identifying the key issues of privacy, control and purpose of data collection and dissemination in an HR context. Through reviewing recent publications (1998‐2004) contrasts are made between earlier and new processes in applicant attraction, search and assessment. The impact of these potential changes on privacy and equity is then examined for three stakeholders: applicants, organisations, and testers.Findings – Identifies the potential for misuse of data through these systems and the possibility of the perpetuation of discrimination for traditional marginalised groups. Raises the increased power brought about through such processes for organisations through data assemblage and for testers via inc...

Do we bank on regulation or reputation? A meta-analysis and meta-regression of organizational trust in the financial services sector

Purpose – Trust in financial institutions has been eroded through the collapse of mortgage-related securities, with confidence further denuded through well publicized cases of rogue traders and rate fixing cases, such as with the Lehman brothers, the Libor rate-fixing scandals, and the hypo real estate breakdown. In response to these events, governments have introduced a range of distinct policy initiatives designed to restore trust in this sector. Thus, the question arises: are these regulations and control mechanisms sufficient in isolation, or are there other elements that this sector needs to pay attention to in efforts to build and sustain customers’ trust? The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – There is a compelling agenda for both financial organizations and academics to understand better organizational trust in this context especially the role and impact of regulatory mechanisms in its development and repair. The paper therefore examines the special facets of the fin...

Grounding Trust in Inter-organizational Alliances: An Exploration of Trust Evolution

This paper explores the role of trust in coordinating teams operating at the interface between multiple functions and organisations in strategic alliances. To understand the issues faced by these teams, we study cognitive & relational factors between partners and focus on the process of trust evolution and risk management in the complex interface between strategic partners. This research examined two coordinating teams. We explore how coordinating teams construed risks in context; the differences of the symbolic role between formal and extra-role behaviours of partners in engendering trust; and the distinct processes through which trust was negotiated between partners. We identify the implications of trust on the management of alliances and the impact of uncertainty by exploring the role of coordinating teams in as risk mitigators, examine perceptions of trust as a coordinating mechanism, antecedent for reducing risks or just another mechanism of control, and looked at changes in partner behaviours when trust was breached. Data for this study were collected on a longitudinal basis in two case studies. The first examined a coordinating team tasked to translate an award winning innovative design into a viable museum, while the second examined a team tasked to manage the provision of outsourced insurance services offered by a financial institution. Goffman?s (1972) categories of situational, relational and interpersonal risk were used as a means of framing risk and trust between stakeholder organisations and of exploring self-perceptions about their risk mitigating roles by members of the coordinating team.

The development and destruction of organizational trust during recruitment and selection

Recruitment and selection are processes which precede the formal HR (human resource) employment cycle (Searle and Skinner, ch. 1 in this volume). HR recruitment processes generate potential applicants from which the organization assesses and selects suitable new employees(Searle, 2009). While research has identified high levels of trust as common within the early stages of the employment relationship (Robinson, 1996), few have considered applicants’ trust in the organization during the pre-employment stage. We contend that as the start of a relationship is the ‘most critical time frame for organizational participants to develop trust’ (McKnight et al., 1998: 473), this is a serious omission. Recruitment and selection present a unique context in which to examine organizational trust as they comprise key situations in which the trustworthiness of an organization is articulated and enacted. In this chapter, we shall demonstrate how these processes affect not only the trust perceptions of applicants, but also those of existing staff. By explicitly recognizing the role of organizational trust in pre-entry processes, we reveal new insights about the behaviour of applicants and recruiters, and demonstrate the fragility of trust. We contend that applicant attraction is predicated on organizational trust made salient through these processes, which underpin applicants’ recruitment, subsequent selection and job offer behaviour.

Trust, HRM, and the Employment Relationship

Trust has long been considered a crucial determinant of people’s experiences of work and the employment relationship (see, for example, Fox, 1974). Yet a commonplace argument holds that the increasing demands placed upon contemporary organizations (globalized market competition, de-regulation, and re-regulation), as well as trends in workforce composition (greater education levels, greater cultural diversity) and in the management of work (transactional contractual arrangements, increasing workloads and job-creep, information technologies), have heightened interest in trust among HR professionals (Hope-Hailey, Farndale, & Truss, 2005; Searle & Skinner, 2011; Sparrow & Marchington, 1998).

The Routledge Companion to Trust

By facilitating cooperation and enhancing stability, trust is an essential yet extremely fragile commodity in organizations. In this chapter, we explore how trust and distrust can play a significant role in shaping forgiveness in the aftermath of workplace offenses. In a review of the literature, we highlight how trust can enable, and distrust can disable, forgiveness processes. Further, we argue that some offenses may create so much distrust that forgiveness is not even a possibility, and thus alternative approaches must be considered. By leveraging conflict management approaches that have been identified in organizational behaviour as well as in other literatures, we outline alternatives to forgiveness that can emerge when people have varying degrees of trust or distrust in the offender (e.g. peaceful coexistence, detente, separation). We also argue that forgiveness can serve as a contextual factor that can shape the restoration of trust. We conclude with a call for new directions in theory and research examining the interplay between trust, distrust, and forgiveness in organizational settings.