Journal of Managerial Psychology

Co-worker trust as a social catalyst for constructive employee attitudes

Natalie Ferres Julia Connell Anthony Travaglione
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Natalie Ferres Julia Connell Anthony Travaglione, (2004),"Co-worker trust as a social catalyst for
constructive employee attitudes", Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 19 Iss 6 pp. 608 - 622
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JMP
19,6 Co-worker trust as a social
catalyst for constructive
employee attitudes
608
Natalie Ferres
School of Management, University of Western Sydney, Penrith, Australia
Julia Connell
Graduate School of Business, University of Newcastle, Newcastle, Australia
Anthony Travaglione
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Asia Pacific Graduate School of Management, Charles Sturt University,

Bathurst, Australia
Keywords Trust, Employee attitudes, Organizational behaviour
Abstract Research into interpersonal trust within organisational contexts tends to concentrate
on managers as a referent, largely ignoring the potential social benefits of trust amongst
co-workers. Hence, the aim of this study is to investigate the influence of co-worker trust on selected
organisational perceptions and attitudes. Results provided empirical support for the fundamental
role of co-worker trust. Co-worker trust was found to be a significant predictor of perceived
organisational support, lowered turnover intention, and greater affective commitment. In view of
these results, it is suggested that there may be opportunities for organisations to improve
individual and organisational effectiveness by engendering trust throughout peer levels.

Journal of Managerial Psychology
Vol. 19 No. 6, 2004
pp. 608-622
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0268-3946
DOI 10.1108/02683940410551516
Introduction
Recent organisational developments reflect the importance of trust in interpersonal
relationships for sustaining individual and organisational effectiveness (McAllister,
1995). Researchers have recognised that interpersonal trust between employees
enhances the development of social capital within organisations (Spagnolo, 1999).
In this context, social capital refers to the inherent value found in constructive human
relationships and connections within the workplace (Cohen and Prusak, 2000). As such,
it is understood that social capital is aligned with sustained competitive advantage
(Barney, 1991; Naphapiet and Ghosal, 1998), reduced transaction costs (Barney and
Hanson, 1994), organizational learning (Bouty, 2000), knowledge sharing (Cohen and
Prusak, 2000), innovation (Cooke and Wills, 1999) and improved financial performance
(Waddock and Graves, 1997). These outcomes are evident as coordinated action is only
possible when interdependent employees work effectively together through trust
(McAllister, 1995). Put simply, trust can facilitate effective relationships and attitudes
that impact on an organisation’s bottom line.
A renaissance of interest into trust research has directed attention to its
fundamental influence in the social environment of the organisation (Carnevale and
Weschler, 1992; Mayer et al., 1995; Tyler and Kramer, 1996). As members of
organisations, we are inclined to trust those with whom we work to take actions that lie
outside contractual obligations (McLain and Hackman, 1999). The realm of
interpersonal trust studies tends to concentrate on trust in management, or the
reciprocal trust inherent in manager-subordinate relationships as the organisational
 trust referent (Albrecht and Travaglione, 2003; Laschinger et al., 2000). This focus is Constructive
understandable considering the documented impact of trust in management on many employee
performance-related factors (Kramer, 1996). According to Tyler and Degoey (1996),
managers play a crucial role in the development of trust since they control the flow of attitudes
information through either sharing or not sharing key information. The degree of trust
within an organisation depends somewhat on managerial philosophy, organisational
actions and structures, and employees’ expectations of reciprocity. However, studies 609
that focus on a “trust in management” perspective often ignore trust relationships at
the co-worker level. This may be an unfortunate oversight, as according to Cohen and
Prusak (2001) investing in social capital requires the development of trust both within
and between management layers.
Although the importance of co-worker or peer trust has been acknowledged
(Chattopadhyay and George, 2001; Cook and Wall, 1980; McAllister, 1995), the matter
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of its effect has not yet received systematic theoretical attention. Thus, the present
study was designed to contribute to the understanding of co-workers’ interpersonal
relationships by examining the extent to which co-worker trust influences perceived
organisational support (POS), intention to leave and affective commitment. These
constructs were chosen as they were identified through earlier qualitative findings as
important outcomes of trust both within and across peer levels (Connell et al., 2003).
The following theoretical propositions provide an explanatory framework for
investigating the role of co-worker trust in influencing these workplace variables with
the concepts of trust and co-worker’s trust outlined first.

Theoretical background
The trust concept
Trust is conceptualised in a variety of ways. GuIbert and McDonough (1986, p. 175)
contend that “trust pertains to whether or not one individual is able to value what
another is up to and demonstrate respect for him or her particularly when the
individual’s need and those of the person taking the action momentarily compete”.
Carnevale and Weschler (1992, p. 473) find that trust is the expectation of “ethical, fair,
and non-threatening behavior, and concerns for the rights of others”, while Cook and
Wall (1980, p. 39) suggest that trust is “the extent to which one is willing to ascribe
good intentions to and have confidence in the words and actions of other people”.
Furthermore, Mishra (1996, p. 265) argues that trust is “one party’s willingness to be
vulnerable to another party based on the belief that the latter party is (a) competent,
(b) open, (c) concerned, and (d) reliable”. Definitions offered by Albrecht and
Travaglione (2003), Currall and Judge (1995) and Mayer and Davis (1999) extend these
propositions by positing the “willingness to act” as a defining feature of trust.
McAllister’s (1995, p. 25) definition consolidates these ideas identifying interpersonal
trust as “the extent to which a person is confident in, and willing to act on the basis of
the words, actions, and decisions of another”. Consistent with this definition, the
measure employed in the present study looks at ratings of the trustworthiness of
individuals as well as employees’ willingness to act on perceptions of trustworthiness.

The influence of dispositional trust

Trust as a dispositional personality trait is concerned with an individual’s inclination
to believe that others will be prepared to act in the trustor’s best interests
 JMP (Kramer, 1999). These individuals are informally called “trusting persons” (McLain and
19,6 Hackman, 1999, p. 153). To explain the origins of such dispositional trust, Rotter (1971,
1980) proposed that people project their early trust-related experiences to build-up
general beliefs about other people.
Although a number of organisational theorists have acknowledged the existence of
dispositional trust there has not been a great deal of interest shown in exploring the
610 effect of dispositional trust on trust on attitudes (Kramer, 1999). Yet abundant evidence
exists to suggest that individuals vary greatly in their inclination to trust other people
(Gurtman, 1992; Sorrentino et al., 1995). Based on this estimation, Albrecht (2001) notes
that it is constructive to measure dispositional trust as an individual difference
variable when exploring trust within organisational environments. This is consistent
with Mayer and Davis’s (1999) assertion that dispositional trust would be likely to
explain a significant amount of variance in organisational trust scores over and above
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situational or organisational variables. Hence, a measure of dispositional trust is

included in this study as a control variable.

Consequences of trust
To determine the value of promoting trust within organisations, it is important to first
review the potential consequences of trust on attitudes. Studies by Laschinger et al.
(2000) and Tan and Tan (2000) suggested that trust influences affective and
continuance commitment. Studies by Andersson and Bateman (1997), Butler (1999) and
Rousseau and Tijoriwala (1999) suggested that attitudes toward change are a likely
outcome of trust. Trust is also thought to operationalise citizenship behaviours
(Robinson and Morrison, 1995), job satisfaction (Cunningham and MacGregor, 2000),
and reduce non-need fulfillment (Cook and Wall, 1980). The link between trust and
intention to turnover is also supported in the literature (Konovsky and Cropanzano,
1991; Mishra and Morrisey, 1990). However, with a notable exception (Cook and Wall,
1980), the trust research literature does not appear to provide a great deal of insight
into whether co-worker trust has similar benefits.

Co-worker trust
Consistent with the earlier mentioned trust conceptualisations (Cook and Wall, 1980;
McAllister, 1995; Mishra, 1996), co-worker trust concerns confidence that one’s
colleagues are competent and will act in a fair, reliable and ethical manner. It assumes
that co-workers will support their peers and will not take advantage of them by
withholding information. Co-worker trust also leads employees to act on the basis that
they have faith in the words and actions of their peers. When developing an instrument
that measured trust in management and trust in peers, Cook and Wall (1980) found that
job satisfaction also had a positive relationship with trust at the peer level, as did
organisational identification and organisational involvement.
The current research aims to extend knowledge of the effects of co-worker trust by
exploring its effects on certain organisational variables. As stated earlier POS, affective
commitment and intention to leave were selected after initial qualitative investigations
(Connell et al., 2003) uncovered these as potential consequences of trust between
co-workers. An overview of the hypothesis development follows.
 Perceived organisational support and co-worker trust Constructive
Eisenberger et al. (1986) proposed that employees form global beliefs about the extent employee
to which an organisation values their contributions and cares about their well-being.
They named this set of beliefs POS. POS can be viewed as a measure of an attitudes
organisation’s concern for its employees (Shore and Tetrick, 1991). Based on social
exchange theory (Blau, 1964) and the norm of reciprocity (Settoon et al., 1996), it is
likely that an employee’s POS contributes to his or her subsequent commitment to the 611
organisation (Shore and Tetrick, 1991), lowers intentions to leave (Rhoades and
Eisenberger, 2002), promotes superior performance (Rhoades and Eisenberger, 2002)
and leads to greater leader-member-exchange (Settoon et al., 1996; Wayne et al., 1997).
Moorman et al. (1998) argued that POS would be explained by factors that affect the
evaluation of the discretionary actions taken by an organisation or people within them.
However, with few exceptions (Moorman et al., 1998; Rhoades and Eisenberger, 2002;
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Wayne et al., 1997) very little research has attempted to identify the factors that explain
the development of POS. Though never explored as an antecedent to POS, co-worker
trust is possibly one factor. In a recent meta-analysis of the related literature, Rhoades
and Eisenberger (2002) argued that POS depends greatly on socioemotional need
fulfillment. Even though POS often stems from managerial/supervisor support,
co-worker trust can aid in satisfying employees’ socioemotional needs (Cohen and
Prusak, 2001). The implication of this idea is that co-worker trust could contribute to
employees’ perceptions of support from the organisation as a whole. Employees are
likely to feel more positive about the support received from the organisation if
co-worker trust is in place. In contrast, having a low level of trust in co-workers is
likely to impact negatively on one’s perception of organisational support. This
conceptualisation leads to the study’s first exploratory hypothesis:
H1. Co-worker trust will be positively related to, and predictive of, perceived
organisational support.

Intention to leave and co-worker trust

Intention to leave is probably the most important predictor of actual turnover and is
defined as the strength of an individual’s conviction that he or she will stay with or leave
the organisation in which she/he is currently employed (Elangovan, 2001). Although
some forms of turnover are desirable (e.g. losing poorly performing employees), most
practitioners and researchers use the term as the loss of valued employees, and thus, as a
negative index of organisational effectiveness (Staw, 1980). Identifying the antecedent
conditions for intention to leave is important for understanding, and thus, controlling
turnover behaviour (Vandenberg and Nelson, 1999). Although approaches to the study
of turnover differ, most include the possibility that turnover is motivated by the
disaffection of the individual with some aspect of the work environment including the
job, co-workers, or organisation (Lee and Mitchell, 1994).
A number of studies conducted in a variety of settings support a relationship
between organisational trust and intention to leave (Costigan et al., 1998; Cunningham
and MacGregor, 2000; Mishra and Morrisey, 1990; Tan and Tan, 2000). It seems that
when trust exists within an organisation, then motivational and decision-making
processes result in felt support, attachment and a willingness to stay (Tan and Tan,
2000). Earlier studies have generally used managers, supervisors or the organisation
 JMP itself as their trust referent. To date there has been a marked lack of attention given to
19,6 the exploration of co-worker trust and intent to leave. Co-worker trust may be
associated with lowered intention to leave for similar reasons as organisational trust
motivates people to stay. The increased collaboration, connection, and effective
communication stemming from trust in co-workers would presumably lead to positive
social networks, feelings of support, greater attachment and socioemotional
612 satisfaction. These outcomes could conceivably be manifested in lowered intention
to leave. The second hypothesis draws on this reasoning:
H2. Co-worker trust will be negatively related to, and predictive of, intention to
leave.
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The role of co-worker trust in affective commitment

For an employee, the foundational concept of workplace commitment is identified
along multiple foci, including commitment to one’s work, career, job, union and
organization (Mueller et al., 1992). Organisational commitment can be further divided
into three principal dimensions: affective, continuance and normative commitment.
Affective commitment can be referred to as “the employee’s emotional attachment to,
identification with, and involvement in the organization” (Meyer and Allen, 1991, p. 67).
This component of commitment represents the degree to which the individual wants to
stay with the organisation (Meyer and Allen, 1991). Continuance commitment
represents the cost to the employee associated with leaving the organisation. Finally,
normative commitment refers to the bond that occurs when an employee feels as
though he or she ought to remain with the organisation.
More than continuance or normative commitment, affective commitment has been
shown to positively influence a number of variables related to organisational well-being,
such as job satisfaction (Meyer et al., 2002) and POS (Rhoades and Eisenberger, 2002).
Owing to its positive relationship with job involvement, job performance, and
organizational citizenship behaviours (Allen and Meyer, 1996), employees with strong
affective commitment also contribute more to the accomplishment of organisational
goals. Affective commitment may enter into a motivational and decision-making process
that produces an intention to leave. Conceptually, higher commitment implies weaker
desire (or motivation) to leave the company and results in lower intention to leave.
Indeed, the empirical evidence speaks clearly on this point (Mathieu and Zajac, 1990).
There is significant theoretical and empirical support for the existence of a linkage
between organisational commitment and trust (Albrecht and Travaglione, 2003; Cook
and Wall, 1980; Hrebinak and Alutto, 1972; Laschinger et al., 2000; Tan and Tan, 2000).
Matthai (1989) specifically evaluated the relationship of trust and affective
commitment and found a strong, positive relationship concluding that trust may be
a predictor of organisational commitment. Moreover, Nyhan (1999) notes that Blake
and Mouton’s (1984) view of trust is synonymous with mutual respect and a key to
developing affective commitment. Conversely, Diffie-Couch (1984) concludes that
mistrust leads to decreased commitment, “and an unquantifiable cost in untapped
potential”. Nonetheless, limited attention has been given to co-worker trust in detailing
affective commitment outcomes.
Based on the extant trust literature, it would seem that co-worker trust may be
closely aligned with affective commitment. Processes of reciprocation that exist due to
 social exchanges at work serve to initiate, strengthen and maintain interpersonal Constructive
relationships. Consequently, a co-worker may begin to see a colleague as predictable employee
and dependable, and respond by developing trust. If the co-worker responds
benevolently (is trustworthy) then commitment to the relationship and the attitudes
organisation could be fostered (Holmes and Rempel, 1989). Cook and Wall (1980)
offer evidence to support this position, as they found that trust in peers correlated
significantly with organisational identification and organisational involvement. Thus 613
the final hypothesis is advanced:
H3. Co-worker trust will be positively related to, and predictive of, affective
commitment.
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Methodology
Sample
The sample consisted of 299 employees from a large public health organisation. While
306 questionnaires were originally returned, the exclusion of relevant missing data
(i.e. incomplete trust in peers, POS, intention to leave and affective commitment items)
reduced the number of included cases. One thousand two hundred questionnaires were
sent to employees within the organisation, yielding a response rate of approximately
26 per cent.
Of the participants, 12 per cent were in management or senior management
positions, while 88 per cent labeled their position as non-management. Of the
respondents, 87 per cent were female and 13 per cent were male. Of the respondents,
31.6 per cent were aged less than 36 years and 46.2 per cent were aged between 37 and
47 years. Of the respondents, 48 per cent had been with the organisation between
6 months and 10 years, with 42 per cent being employed for over 10 years. The
distribution of position level, gender, age and tenure in the sample was representative
of the demographics of the authority where the study was conducted.

Questionnaire measures
Twenty-six items were implemented to obtain information on several organisational
variables and propensity to trust. Demographic information for gender, organisational
tenure, position level, work facility and age were collected via five single items.
A seven-point Likert response format (ranging from 1 ¼ strongly disagree to
7 ¼ strongly agree) was used to measure the following constructs.

Trust in co-workers
Trust in co-workers was measured with a 12-item subscale obtained from the
three-factor workplace trust questionnaire (trust in organisation, trust in manager,
trust in co-workers) developed by Ferres (2002). This scale was psychometrically
evaluated through recent research in Australia and South Africa (Ferres et al., 2004).
The items were constructed via qualitative investigations (Ferres, 2002) and a review
of the available literature (Albrecht and Sevastos, 1999; Cook and Wall, 1980;
McAllister, 1995; Rotter, 1971, 1980). Items deal with co-worker trustworthiness and
related behavioural trust (i.e. the willingness to act based on perceptions of co-worker
trustworthiness). An example item is “I behave on the basis that my co-workers will
not disclose personal information”. The results of the psychometric evaluation as
 JMP found when administered to Australian and South African samples ðn ¼ 685Þ follows
in Table I (Ferres et al., 2004). It can be seen that the coefficients of internal
19,6 homogeneity are substantial in both studies. While the high coefficient as may indicate
some redundancy in items, the employed scale could be said to be a reliable indicator of
co-worker trust.

614 Dispositional trust (control variable)

Five items measure trust as a personality trait. These questions were taken from the
trust subscale in the revised NEO personality inventory (Costa and McCrae, 1985).
Three negatively worded items from the original scale were not included. These were
omitted because strong arguments have been forwarded suggesting that it may be
imprudent to think of distrust as the reverse of trust (Kramer, 1996). The use of reverse
coded trust items, being framed in terms of distrust, may not be tapping into trust
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(Albrecht and Sevastos, 1999). The alpha reliability of the original NEO subscale was
0.90 (Costa and McCrae, 1985). The reliability coefficient of the scale employed in this
study is 0.85. An example item is “My first reaction is to trust people”.

POS
The three questions that measured POS were extracted from the short version of the
survey of perceived organisational support (SPOS) instrument devised by Eisenberger
et al. (1986). The reliability of the SPOS has been reported as 0.93 (Eisenberger et al.,
1986). The internal reliability of the three-item construct used for the current study was
0.92. The three items were chosen from confirmatory factor analysis results
(Travaglione, 1998), which purified the POS instrument. Three items are sufficient to
define a construct and meet the requirements for the identification of confirmatory
factor analytic measurement models (Kline, 1998). Items are: “This organisation is
willing to help me when I need a special favour”, “The organisation values my
contribution to its well-being”, and “The organisation cares about my opinions”.

Intention to leave
Three questions that measured intention to leave were adapted from the intention to
turnover scale contained in the Michigan organisational assessment questionnaire
(Cammann et al., 1979). The internal reliability of this scale was reported by these
researchers as 0.83. The internal reliability of this scale in the present study is 0.73.
An example item is: “I will actively be seeking a job in the coming year”.

Affective commitment
The three questions on affective commitment (AC) were extracted from the affective
component of the three-dimensional Allen and Meyer (1990) commitment instrument.

Trust in co-workers
Australian sample (n ¼ 299) South African sample (n ¼ 386)
Table I.
Results of psychometric Mean item-whole correlation 0.63 0.67
evaluation of co-worker Coefficient a 0.94 0.94
trust scale across two Mean score (range ¼ 1-7) 4.96 4.78
international samples SD 1.3 1.7
 The three items were selected based on confirmatory results that drew out the most Constructive
parsimonious AC measure (Travaglione, 1998). Items are: “I would be very happy to employee
spend the rest of my career with this organisation”, “This organisation has a great deal
of personal meaning for me” and, “I really feel as if this organisation’s problems are my attitudes
own”. The internal reliability of the scale is 0.80 for the current study.
Procedure
Copies of the survey were distributed to the organisation’s payroll service, each with a
615
cover letter and return envelope. Payroll staff attached the questionnaire to the pay
slips of employees within the target sample. Participant anonymity and confidentiality
was assured by having the completed questionnaires directed to the researchers.
Results
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Analysis
All organisational variables were screened for normality, homogeneity of variance and
outliers. One outlier was detected and deleted from subsequent analysis. The measure
for dispositional trust was moderately positively skewed. This measure was
transformed using the formula NEWX ¼ SQRTðk 2 XÞ; where k is the largest value
for the variable (Tabachnick and Fidell, 1996).
H1-H3 were explored through correlational and MLR techniques. Employee’s
disposition towards trust, age, gender, and tenure in their current jobs was also
included in the correlations and MLR models as control variables. Each of these factors
may impact on organisational trust (Mayer and Davis’s, 1999) and influence employee
attitudes in general (Tsui et al., 1992).
Correlation and MLR analysis
Means, standard deviations and intercorrelations for the organisational and control
variables are presented in Table II. In support of each hypothesis proposing a
connection between co-worker trust and positive workplace attitudes, the table
highlights significant moderate relationships between trust and each organisational
attitude. Although all of the correlations involving co-worker trust were sizeable, given

Variable 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

1. Co-worker trust 4.97

(1.27)
2. POS 0.42** 3.54
(1.67)
3. Intention to leave 20.37** 20.48** 3.41
(1.7)
4. Affective 0.38** 0.61** 20.48** 3.56
commitment (1.64)
5. Dispositional trust 0.38** 0.24** 20.11 0.2** 5.6
(1.07) Table II.
6. Age 20.03 20.08 20.14 0.09 0.1 – Means (standard
7. Gender 0.05 0.12* 20.08 0.1 0.1 20.01 – deviations) and
8. Tenure 20.1 20.21** 0.02 0.11 0.11 0.49** 0.08 – intercorrelations of
Notes: *Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (two-tailed); **correlation is significant at the 0.01 organisational and
level (two-tailed); means (standard deviations) appear in bold in the diagonal control variables
 JMP that they were lower than r ¼ 0:80; they did not suggest that respondents could
undoubtedly differentiate between the constructs (Christiansen et al., 1996).
19,6 Standardised regression analyses were conducted to ascertain the unique influence
of co-worker trust on organisational outcomes. Results shown in Table III further
substantiate the study’s hypotheses. Co-worker trust was the strongest predictor of
POS, intention to leave and affective commitment, explaining between 15 and 23 per
616 cent of the variance in scores for each variable. These effects were evidenced after
controlling for the effects of age, gender, tenure, and dispositional trust. Relative to
co-worker trust, the control variables had a small impact on the attitudes investigated
in the study, including dispositional trust.

Discussion
This study examined the relationship between co-worker trust and a set of
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organisational outcomes. Broadly, the results provide empirical support for the
essential role of co-worker trust in positive workplace attitudes and perceptions.
Beyond dispositional and demographic factors, co-worker trust had the most
significant influence on the employee attitudes studied. Results suggest that co-worker
trust enhances the perception of support at an organisational level (H1). These findings
also imply that employees are less likely to want to leave (H2), and are more likely to be
emotionally attached to the organisation (H3) when greater trust in co-workers is
evident. In view of these results and the considerable social capital reported to develop
from trusting relationships in the workplace, it is proposed that there is likely to be
opportunities for organisations to improve individual and organisational effectiveness
by engendering trust throughout peer levels.

Theoretical implications
Tan and Tan (2000) imply that studying trust from different levels of analysis may
produce dissimilar antecedents and outcomes depending on the trust referent. In the
case of this study, the relationships between co-worker trust, POS, turnover intention,
and affective commitment were similar to those found in studies, detailing the
consequences of “trust in management” or “trust in organisation” (Albrecht and
Travaglione, 2003; Laschinger et al., 2000; Mishra and Morrisey, 1990; Tan and Tan,
2000; Whitener, 2001; Whitener et al., 1998).
This study also extended that of Cook and Wall’s (1980) investigations into the
correlates of peer trust. Similar to Cook and Wall’s findings, the results found a link

POS Intention to leave Affective commitment

Variable b b b

Co-worker trust 0.35** 20.39** 0.36**

Age 0.03 20.19* 0.15*
Gender 0.13 20.07 0.01
Table III. Tenure 20.12* 0.07 20.04
MLR for co-worker trust Dispositional trust 0.13 0.06 0.06
and controls predicting R ¼ 0.48 R ¼ 0.44 R ¼ 0.39
POS, intention to leave R 2¼0.23 R 2¼ 0.18 R 2¼ 0.15
and affective F ¼ 17.24** F ¼ 12.1** F ¼ 10.28**
commitment Notes: *p , 0.05; **p , 0.001
 between trust at the co-worker level and organisational commitment. While the current Constructive
results are not comparable to the majority of the extant trust literature, it is suggested employee
that it is acceptable to posit that co-worker trust also facilitates support, commitment
and a desire to stay with an organisation. attitudes
Another theoretical implication involves the POS construct. Although POS has been
measured as an antecedent of organisational trust or trust in managers (Tan and Tan,
2000; Whitener, 2001; Whitener et al., 1998), the findings presented here indicate that 617
POS could also be an outcome of trust, at least at the co-worker level. This indicates
that trust amongst peers could well contribute to employees’ perceptions of support
from the organisation as a whole. Employees who consider their co-workers to be
trustworthy, and are willing to act on the basis of the words, actions, and decisions of
their co-workers, may be more likely to feel positive about the support received from
the organisation. This position differs from traditional views of exchange relationships
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in the workplace, which customarily consider trust as offered in exchange for

organisational support.
The strength of these findings is enhanced because they emerged after controlling
for dispositional trust. The limited influence of dispositional trust on co-worker trust
bears further investigation. Though Mayer et al. (1995) concluded that propensity to
trust should contribute to the explanation of variance in trust if used as part of a more
complete set of variables, our results imply otherwise. Specifically, organisational trust
is likely to be above and beyond a person’s personality when viewed from a co-worker
level. The direct experience of knowing one’s co-workers might well override
employees’ basic predisposition to trust or mistrust (Payne and Clark, 1996). However,
as Payne and Clark argue, trust ratings will be more significant with generalised forms
of trust where employees have more limited contact with the people they are rating.

Limitations and directions for future research

As the present study is, to our knowledge, one of the only studies that have
investigated the effect of co-worker trust, there are certain advantages to be gained.
However, in common with much initial research in a given area, this study also draws
attention to certain methodological issues. For instance, the use of the term “co-worker”
may have been ambiguous to some respondents. Some employees may have
interpreted “co-worker” to mean both their peers and the managers with whom they
work. Furthermore, while the management and gender distribution was representative
of the population within the organisation where the study was conducted, care must be
taken when generalising these results to other organisations and industries, especially
those in the private sector. Another concern involved single method variance of
self-report data; random responding could have impacted on results due to the use of
just one Likert scale for all but five questions. Non-response bias, where people who
respond differ from those who do not, also could not be controlled.
Collectively, the study suggests that co-worker trust may contribute to factors that
aid individual and organisational performance. However, this notion should be
approached with caution. As the results are exploratory in nature, replication with
diverse samples is certainly warranted. The cross-sectional design was a significant
limitation and precluded causal inferences about the effects of co-worker trust.
Longitudinal designs and the use of structural equation modelling are required in
future to refine possible relationships and distinguish causal directions. The effect of
 JMP co-worker trust could also be tested in an intervention study where co-worker trust is
19,6 measured, and conditions under which employees are working are changed to promote
peer trust. The employees’ trust levels, attitudes and behaviours could then be
compared to baseline data and also weighed against a control group that was not
involved in the intervention. Additional outcomes of co-worker trust might also be
explored in future studies, for example, in relation to organisational citizenship
618 behaviour, absence, and performance. Gender differences and differences between
management and non-management employees might also usefully be researched.

Conclusions and practical implications

The current research was not focused on how to develop co-worker trust, but was more
concerned with why co-worker trust should be cultivated. Earlier studies have revealed
Downloaded by University of Copenhagen At 01:41 19 November 2016 (PT)

that when employees work for supportive managers, where trust and respect are the
dominant characteristics of the relationship, less stress and greater productivity are
reported (Davis and Landa, 1999). As this study focused on the additional dimension of
co-worker trust it was found that trust is likely to be fostered between subordinates
and managers, and between co-workers themselves, where organisations provide
access to information and resources and the culture is perceived as supportive,
encouraging an empowering management style (Kanter, 2003).
The positive aspects of co-worker trust have implications for organisational leaders
and human resource professionals – particularly where teamwork and collaboration are
necessary. An essential component of self-directed teams and other forms of horizontal
collaboration is the sharing of knowledge and information throughout the organisation.
The creation of such a culture requires organisational leaders to build social capital
through collaboration and mutual support which may require them to adopt
socioemotive roles such as facilitating participation, showing concern for team members
feelings and reducing conflict (Daft, 2002). These results suggest that an investment in
the promotion of co-worker trust and social capital may contribute to the development of
a stable, committed workforce that feels they are being supported by the organisation.
In summary, this paper has outlined some of the benefits of co-worker trust,
suggesting that its development be incorporated into new ways of thinking about
management. Although the development and maintenance of trust within workplace
relationships is challenging, especially where existing levels of trust are low, there is
every indication that it is an important feature of organisational life that will result in
worthwhile outcomes.

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Further reading
Cornelious, N. (2002), Building Workplace Equity, Thomson, London.
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pp. 209-25.
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Psychology of Commitment, Absenteeism, and Turnover, Academic Press, New York, NY.
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