Organizational Trust, Trust in the Chief Executive and Work Satisfaction

Abstract

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 employee's 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 manager's 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 organization's 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.