Trust and anchoring events: Game changing moments in employment relationships

Events can create discontinuous shifts or “shocks” that alter perceptions of an employment relationship generally, and specifically the levels of trust to create anchoring events which punctuates and change perceptions in... [ view full abstract ]

Events can create discontinuous shifts or “shocks” that alter perceptions of an employment relationship generally, and specifically the levels of trust to create anchoring events which punctuates and change perceptions in working lives. This paper focuses on employee-elicited critical organisational events that are likely to trigger the formatting and revising of trust beliefs, decisions and actions. Using a person-centric perspective, we explore the underlying mechanisms as to how and why these particular types of events disrupt more mundane aspects of daily working lives in order to explore trust building and reduction in organisations. Based on 56 interviews of public sector staff, our analysis identifies the defining characteristics of both positive and negative game-changing events. We show how discrete events can cause profound shifts in organisational relations. Our findings reveal negative events are often the product of large scale organisational change, but also how experiences of seemingly ‘small’ and discrete events are significant, and perhaps even pivotal, for building trust, ‘changing’ trust and trust resilience. We identify how organisational relationships can be changed radically not only through a gradual process of social exchange, but also by personally relevant discrete events.