Abstract:
The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between organizational trust and organizational productivity. The investigator predicted that a positive correlation exists between levels of organizational trust and individual productivity. Based on this author's review, it appears that this empirical study was the first since 1983 to directly investigate the strength of the relationship between organizational trust and productivity. In addition to the use of a quantitative method (N̲ = 69), the study includes qualitative methods of research to help understand the centrality of trust in the organizational setting. Two surveys were used to measure levels of trust, while the productivity measure was based upon computerized productivity records for each subject. The qualitative approach (N̲ = 10) was in the phenomenological tradition. Based on this author's review, this appeared to be the first phenomenological inquiry of trust (trusting and mistrusting interactions) conducted in the organizational setting. The findings, based on computations of the Pearson r̲, showed a nonsignificant relationship among the trust measures and the performance measure (r̲ = .14, r̲ = -.07). The qualitative results, however, provided anecdotal support that a relationship exists between trusting interactions, mistrusting interactions, performance, and job satisfaction.
