Organizational trust refers to the tendency of individuals or groups within an organization to trust each other. Tschannen-Moran (2004) describes trust as one’s “willingness to be vulnerable to another based on the confidence that the other is benevolent, honest, open, reliable, and competent” (p. 17). The purpose of this study was to research the faculty perceptions about their trust relationship with their organizations in the form of supervisor-employee relationship. For better or worse, the climate of the campus affects students, faculty, staff, and other stakeholders. Organizational trust, or the lack thereof, is an important characteristic of a campus (Baker, 2014).
The value of organizational trust has been observed in several different types of organizations. The business sector has received the most attention (Lee, Gillespie, Mann, & Wearing, 2010), research on athletic teams have been limited (Dirks, 2000). Significant attention has been on elementary schools (Cosner, 2009) leaving Higher education institutions to be studied to a lesser extent than the other organizations in terms of building trust (Baird, 2010).
As with other types of organizations, institutions of higher education are highly complex, with many occupational roles, divisions, departments, levels of authority, and operating sites (Price and Mueller, 1986). Moorman, Deshpande, and Zaltman (1993) indicate that this complexity exists even more in terms of variations at the horizontal level in divisions and departments, at the vertical level in terms of levels of authority, and finally in terms of the sites of the organization. This diversity yields situations in which the interpersonal relationships that are important for developing and maintaining trust between individuals made impossible because of a lack of physical interaction.
The present study was conducted in the context of Pakistan, in the provincial capital of Punjab Lahore. Public sector universities located in the cities were identified and a survey was conducted over the teaching faculty of these universities. A total sample of 252 was collected measuring Organizational Trust through the Organizational Trust Index (OTI). Perception of Faculty members of the higher education institutes level of trust will help identify whether their respective organizations are “…benevolent honest, open, reliable, and competent” especially in the context of public sector higher education institutes.
The study highlights the differences in the perception of trust on the basis of the hierarchical levels and its intersection with gender in higher education institutes in the context of Pakistan. The disparity that is highlighted hints at the prevailing gender differences at different hierarchical levels and its possible influence on perception of trust. With the increasing number of females joining the academia it was recommended that HEI’s need to revisit their policies and their organization culture that is resulting in limited number of women climbing the academic hierarchy, leading to lower levels of trust in comparison to men.
I4 - Trust-based Management in Public Sector. In Public Managers We Trust?
