Trust Processes in the Eye of the Storm: How Do We Cope with Salient Vulnerability?

Disruptive change has become a hallmark of the post-financial crisis era. This paper explores 57 employees currently working in five austerity-constrained and change-riven public sector organizations in a mixed method study of... [ view full abstract ]

Disruptive change has become a hallmark of the post-financial crisis era. This paper explores 57 employees currently working in five austerity-constrained and change-riven public sector organizations in a mixed method study of the neglected issue of vulnerability, to reveal how individuals experience vulnerability, and whether and how such perceptions are triggered and their impact. Using card-sort and thinking-aloud technique we identify seven affect and cognition configurations of those experiencing deep change and ongoing uncertainty. We contribute to trust literature through analysis to show not just one steady state, but two with differently valenced emotions. Further we identify dramatic, vigilant salient-states in differentiating four mixed and one negative clusters showing marked differences in the evaluative sense-making and self-selected emotions of these employees. We contribute to the sense-making literature through inclusion of emotions different valence and show their different intensities in our four mixed clusters. They comprise varying levels of alert to, and vigilance about, distinct rupturing concerns. The simultaneous self-selection of opposingly valenced emotions provides more nuance about affect and cognition, characterized by distinct foci and intensity of members’ active sense-making. We find distinct types of threat appraisal, temporal concern, and differences in the range and scope of their vigilance targets revealing employee attention on various distal and also more proximal dependent relationships.