Trust in the Workplace

### **Chapter 5**

## Trust in Leader as a Psychological Factor on Employee and Organizational Outcome

*Panteha Farmanesh and Pouya Zargar*

### **Abstract**

While leadership studies have tackled the concept in various ways, it can be said that often basic psychological elements are overlooked. In this sense, the notion of trust is focused in this chapter to highlight, elaborate, and provide a thorough understanding on the vitality of trust between leader and his/her followers. Whether a business achieves success or not is highly dependent on leadership of the firm. Mutual trust among staff and their managers is a crucial matter that can hinder or enhance the process of success. With the existence of trust, workplace and environment of company become soothing for individuals, leading to positive psychological outcomes, and improved wellbeing. Therefore, we argue that building, and gaining trust should be the focus of leaders regardless of their style for it will improve performance, and thus, organizational outcome while simultaneously benefiting the staff via psychological elements. This becomes more vivid in modern business world as wellbeing of individuals and their mental health are more emphasized. Both leaders and scholars can benefit from this manuscript.

**Keywords:** trust, leadership, psychology, organizational behavior, employees

### **1. Introduction**

Trust in leader has been discussed in numerous studies and across several disciplines. Trust can be defined as "the belief that something/someone is true or correct, or that you can rely on it" [1]. In current business world, leaders play a major role in the outcomes of organizations. These can be turnover, environmental responsibilities, wellbeing, social image, and market elements. It is widely believed that trust carries a vital importance in the relationship between leader and follower. The higher the extent of trust, the higher the likelihood of positive behavioral and performance outcomes. Sciences such as psychology, behavioral science, neuroscience, education, and politics have noted the aforementioned vitality. To provide a thorough understanding on the linkage of leadership and trust, an array of recent studies have been reviewed. In this sense, different styles of leadership and their impact on trust are highlighted. This provides a pathway for comprehending how trust as a psychological factor is linked to leadership and subsequently, employee and organizational outcomes.

The manner in which businesses are managed, requires leaders to meet high standards by being able to comprehend data, communicate and interact across

various media channels, be aware of political situations and changes. Notably, leaders are to provide quality services, and compete with others for achieving organizational success [2]. For leaders, it is imperative that their bonds and linkage with others (staff or clients) are recognized as a prevalence for business conduct. This becomes more explicit in service sectors as human interaction are constant or higher compared to other industries. However, empowering followers, focusing on their wellbeing, and provision of an organizational culture, where resilience is encouraged have become easier to comprehend through development of neuroscience and other relevant fields of psychology and behavior. Emergence of these disciplines have provided a combination of scientific and psychological factors that aid leaders in obtaining higher levels of effectiveness [2]. Making better decisions, finding new solutions, regulating emotions, sense of teamwork, and being more influential on others as well as implementing change more smoothly are among the traits that a leader with scientific knowledge can exhibit [3]. Neuro-leadership has been examined in human services with consideration of issues such as, effect of toxic leadership, turnover, and organizational culture. These are reflections of a leaders' approach, staff and their engagement with job, and organizational trust [4]. Leader is not a mere title in business but rather a behavioral framework, in which the linkage between leader and their staff is focused [5]. In this sense, there are three fundamental aspects, which are required to exist that are namely, leaders' commitment, harmonized followers, and a mutual aspiration towards the firms' vision among all members.

Among the attributes and traits of leaders, trust is a key factor that can lead to emergence of positive behavioral outcomes. Psychologically, trust can lead to employees exhibiting extra role behaviors, volunteer intent, engagement, higher job satisfaction, and performance. Embedded in the premise of leader-member exchange (LMX) theory [6], a two-way relationship between leader and their followers is shaped through trust, emotions, and respect. It is important to note that from psychological perspective, trust is a fundamental element for psychosocial development [7]. In this regard, leaders may treat each individual differently and thus, have high or low quality exchanges, which will lead to varying perceptions and trust degrees among staff. The higher the quality of exchanges between leader and follower, the higher the extent of trust, respect and obligation and vice versa [8]. Based on LMX, leader and follower become acquainted (from not knowing one another) in a process that matures through exchanges and is shaped by support, loyalty, respect, emotions, and trust that are mutually inclusive. This highlights the psychological, and social capabilities of a leader to establish an environment, in which individuals can thrive as their psychology is engaged with the workplace. Therefore, leadership and trust should be taken into consideration from both negative and positive aspects.

### **2. Trust hinderer**

### **2.1 Toxic leadership**

As noted, leaders can boost or dampen trust based on their approach and behavior. Toxic leadership can be referred to as traditional, autocratic and against values and ethics of work in a social setting. Toxic leadership leads to negativity in organizational culture with significant effects on work processes, approach towards operations, which become highly vivid in times of difficulty and crises [9]. Leaders, who deploy such approach disregard and diminish social values at work and ethical means of business conduct. A negative culture is cultivated through this approach

### *Trust in Leader as a Psychological Factor on Employee and Organizational Outcome DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.100372*

that comprises fear, which in turn lowers engagement and response. Boldly, toxic approach of a leader can hinder welfare and wellbeing due to excessive stress. Decreased morale, emotional drainage, and lack of trust are among the explicit outcomes of this style which turns to higher rates of turnover and burnout.

The word toxic can be applied not only to leaders, but to management, organizations, and work environments [10]. Albeit, being a toxic leader varies from transactional or 'hard individual' [11]. It is interesting to note that only individual characteristics are not determinants of toxic behavior. In this sense, traits (behavioral), and factors such as, culture, climate, and environment can be influential in the extent of toxicity. While personal characteristics (e.g. hard or tough, and authoritarian-directed) are important for understanding and pinpointing toxic leadership, culture has been noted to be significant for thoroughly analyze this behavior [12]. Thus, it can be interpreted that toxic characteristics of a leader can be enhanced through proper organizational culture and environments. Such aspects can be integrated in organizational strategies for further development.

Notably, communication techniques or attitude of a leader are not the predictors of a toxic persona, but rather dynamics of toxicity are derived from negative discouraging effects [13]. Thus, such leaders may prove to be very efficient in their tasks. However, they add fuel to the fire of a climate or culture that subdues wellbeing of followers/staff. In other words, instead of motivating and aspiration, they tend to control others, leaning towards a toxic climate. Turnover, drug or substance abuse, lowered motivation and productivity, and other negative outcomes arise through such approach in the workplace.

In this sense, as trust is a psychological state which incorporates depending on other(s) based on expectations and intentions, and acceptance of being vulnerable [14]. *Cognitive* trust that is the belief of the extent of which someone can be trusted; *affective* trust, that is the expression of emotions and their vitality in shaping trust; and *behavioral* trust that is the actual disclosure and dependency through sharing important information with the other individual are the three components of trust [10, 15]. These components are formed through observations of attitudes and behaviors of others such as, leader, organization, or group based on equity, ethics, fairness, friendliness, and being considerate to others' rights. This implies that a leaders' behavior and approach should comprise of emphasis on developing trust, and not unethical or discouraging behaviors. *Cognitive* trust addresses the extent of which another person is trustworthy. These are sets of beliefs and value-related aspects. *Affective* trust explains the importance of emotions in the process of trust. The role of leader and relationship with individual is of significance due to emotions at work. This is while *behavioral* trust is the notion of sharing important/sensitive information with an individual, or being able to rely on them.

### **3. Trust boosters**

### **3.1 Empowering leadership**

This style is the by-product of praising shared, transformational, and democratic leadership styles, which focus on the leaders' role as a single player in decision-making, autonomy, an authority. In this sense, empowering leaders inherit foundational frameworks of the aforementioned styles, and reshape it into a different structure. Empowering leadership delegates autonomy and responsibilities of managers among members of the firm, leading to a shared power situation that constantly promotes inner motivation [16]. As empowering leaders delegate responsibilities, they create a sense of involvement, commitment, and support for

individuals for improving professional aspect of their lives. Through self-determination theory [17] individuals meet the needs to thrive, develop and psychological wellbeing via autonomy, relatedness, and competence. This leads to high levels of self-satisfaction. Empowering leaders further provide psychological strengthening that is explained through social exchange theory (SET) [18]. This theory states that emotional support, encouragement, and desirable incentives can enhance selfefficacy for carrying out tasks at job. Moreover, SET incorporates the link between empowering leadership and trust. Trust is accumulated through gathering data regarding an individual or via a cognitive evaluation of the bond and experiences with that individual. Being trustworthy is considered to be the most vital virtue of a leader. Honesty of a leader blooms trust in their followers and thus, leaders' behavior is adjusted accordingly.

Sense of security and positivity is created, when trust in leader/manager is developed by staff. This is while stress, burnout, lack of engagement, lowered focus and other negative emotions arise when trust lacks. It is perceived by employees that personal achievements are likely to fail, when trust in leader is absent, which leads to reduced job satisfaction and development of negative attitudes towards the firm, colleagues and leader [16]. It has also been noted that empowering leaders can trigger innovativeness by fostering trust. Through trust leaders are able to exchange knowledge with their followers, which can lead to emergence of new ideas. The mediating effect of trust in leader on creativity and empowering leadership has been noted in the literature [19]. As staff are given power in the company, they are more likely to develop trust, since the organizational climate provides support and respect. Subsequently, staff will tend to be more involved and make an effort to aid the organization. If members have high uncertainty avoidance, empowering leaders should utilize trust as an element for promoting innovativeness. Thus, employees, who trust in their leader are more capable of handling risk and dealing with the unknown [20].

When concern is genuine and is combined with care and emotions, trust in leader is shaped as affect-based [19, 21]. This is reflected in a sincere feeling of empowerment for employees by the leaders' behavior, which in turn enables the staff to exhibit higher rates of creativity. Self-efficacy is facilitated when leaders are trusted, especially when their guidance is sought by their followers. Empowering leaders show confidence in their followers, which in turn enhances their performance [22]. This is while employees who do not trust their leaders will limit the effectiveness of empowering leaders on self-efficacy, hindering their creative abilities. Thus, this style of leadership is adequate for those with high levels of uncertainty avoidance, and have developed affect-based trust in their leader.

### **3.2 Transformational leadership**

This style of leadership is effective on individual and team levels as well as being applicable in any society [23]. It focuses on improvement on a constant basis through competence of followers and their trust in leader. The extent of trust in leader is among the main predictors of organizational identification and improvement in the firm, which is highly influenced by the behavior of a leader. Transformational leaders are successful in enhancing trust for their employees, making them feel belonged to the organization, and thus, improve performance and outcomes of the company. SET implies that experiences that are shared among individuals lead to exchanges that are embedded with reciprocation. This further shows the vitality of trust in relationships among individuals, and particularly in the bond between a leader and follower. Trust is the glue that holds a linkage between a leader and their followers and is regarded as the risk and vulnerability that are perceived

### *Trust in Leader as a Psychological Factor on Employee and Organizational Outcome DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.100372*

[14]. Individuals in the firm assume trust based on the treatment they receive from the firm and especially, its leader. This treatment has to be fair and desirable so that trust can be built. Moreover, confidentiality, identification with the firm, and safety are important factors for an individual in a company to build his/her trust.

The leader or supervisor of a company is regarded as the agent, which makes them extremely important for creation and establishment of trust. Trust in leader has been linked to a variety of positive outcomes such as, performance, satisfaction, autonomy, extra-role behavior, and creativity and innovation as when employees trust their leader, the workplace environment becomes safe and nurturing. Transformational leaders focus on provision of motivation for their subordinates and push them towards performing beyond the norms. Additionally, they provide meaning and value for the goals that are to be achieved. This enables the transformational leader to meet higher needs of their followers, and aspire self-interest. Idealized influence is among the characteristics of these leaders, which triggers trust as followers can take their leader as a role model [24]. They emphasize on organizational goals prior to their own, which further induces affective trust in their followers. Provision of feedback, variations in tasks, and autonomy in decision-making are among the key factors that a transformational leader uses to facilitate trust. Furthermore, they use their charismatic personality to motivate followers towards seeking organizational goals with higher commitment. This leads to an environment, where trust is fostered as vision is shared and workplace has harmony [25].

Transformational leaders project trustworthiness, which is defined as integrity, benevolence, and ability and is regarded as a major element for followers to trust in their leader. Moreover, these leaders elaborate on company's vision and goals in a manner that attracts others. This is referred to as inspirational motivation and enables staff to be more focused on their tasks, and in turn have more trust in their leaders. They have high concerns for the needs of their followers and seek to strengthen them through various means. This is referred to as individualized consideration, which shows high levels of genuine care that will lead to followers perceiving their leader as a trustworthy individual. Employees are more likely to exchange information and knowledge, when trust is present [24, 25]. Though means such as, technology, management, and infrastructure aid employees in gaining knowledge and improve their abilities, it is not enough to have a sufficient communication flow. This is where trust shows its importance as personal features such as, reputation and fulfilling promises are factors that facilitate trust. Thus, the role of leader is imperative for establishing a smooth communication process, in which trust can be built. Communication becomes more efficient as trust is built, and knowledge sharing, cooperation, and better interactions are shaped as leaders provide an atmosphere, where employees have necessities for proper interaction. This in turn, leads to higher levels of trust [26].

In the light of what was mentioned, trust in leader is regarded as a psychological process between a transformational leader and his/her followers, which leads to sense of identification with the firm by employees, and allows them to improve on a constant manner. Embedded in the premise of SET, transformational leaders are more effective in establishing trust, when compared to other traditional leadership styles such as, transactional or charismatic. This is due to the fact that transformational leaders develop the workplace through social exchanges and not economic ones. This is the main difference between transactional leadership and transformational in developing trust. Similarly, charismatic leaders are less successful in building trust, when compared to transformational due to their focus on organizational goals. SET explains how reciprocation is the basis of leader-follower linkage. Transformational leadership is more effective in building trust among traditional styles. As followers trust in their leader and exchanges between them

grow, the sense of organizational identification and belongingness improves, which positively impacts employee performance. Transformational leadership is known as an antecedent of newer styles such as, servant leadership, and has been known to be of significance in modern contexts of business.

### **3.3 Servant leadership**

This style of leadership as the name shows, focuses on serving others. In this sense, servant leaders tend to serve their followers' needs and wants before their own [27]. The theoretical foundation and nexus of servant leadership can be found in chaos theory, where decentralization, differentiation of tasks, collaboration, flexibility and adaptability of structures and processes, participation, and autonomy are focused [28]. In the premise of chaos theory, it is important to recognize the difference between unpredictability and complexity, and randomness. While the former have causes whether known or unknown at the time of occurrence, the latter refers to events that have no cause. Chaotic systems comprise *sensitive initial conditions*, *self-similarity*, *iterative feedback*, and *strange attractor* [see [29]]. As organizations are dynamic, complex, and nonlinear systems, chaos theory is applied in organizational theory. Notwithstanding that servant leadership constructs have been linked to those of chaos theory. Personal bond created by servant leaders or the organizational culture they establish address initial conditions and strange attractor aspects through psychological effects. Moreover, servant leaders reshape their systems to achieve development and positive results. This is similar to situational variables that are incorporated in chaos theory for alteration in systems [29]. In addition, chaos and servant leadership are alike in growth manner. Servant leaders tend to grow their linkage with their followers through ever-growing systems, which links to iterative feedback and strange attractor dimensions of chaos theory.

From an individual perspective, servant leaders constantly seek skilled followers and value their input and ideas. This is a means for establishing trust between leader and followers. Moreover, responsibility of failure or negative results is taken by the servant leader, which further promotes trust. From a cultural perspective, servant leaders affectively facilitate a learning environment through role model behavior, training, and initiatives that enhances the atmosphere of work. As they create personal bonds with their followers, collaboration, value and accountability are promoted and learning is motivated. Furthermore, servant leaders exhibit high levels of integrity, which further established the notion of trust [30, 31].

Servant leaders are employee-oriented [30, 31], with significant influence on positive outcomes in different sectors and industries, and levels (personal, team, and organizational). As these leaders are people-centric, their effect in service industry has been note to be significant as they focus on others' wellbeing and serving their needs, which goes beyond the organization, and to the society. Through personal and close bonds with followers, servant leaders are able to facilitate higher qualities of relationships, which in turn can be seen in performance of their followers. Early works on servant leadership indicates a number of dimensions that are namely, listening, empathy, healing, conceptualization, awareness, persuasion, stewardship, building community, foresight, and high commitment [32]. In this sense, servant leadership and transformational leadership share features of vision, being influential, and trust. Servant leaders distinguish themselves from transformational, transactional and charismatic leaders with their emphasis on development and wellbeing of others around them. With altruism, servant leaders tend to their followers' needs and goals prior to their own, or the organizations' goals. This behavior puts the attention and focus on others and their progress rather than making the leader a sole importance.

### *Trust in Leader as a Psychological Factor on Employee and Organizational Outcome DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.100372*

Characteristics of a servant leader predict various behavioral outcomes such as, trust. They can further enhance trust in organization as they act as stewards of the firm. Due to the fact that trust plays a major role in the relationship between a leader and his/her followers, interpersonal trust, communication, harmonization, and integrity of the leader become vivid elements. Notably, trust and its existence provides a stable climate within the organization, which leads to positive results. Servant leaders foster trust by being role- models and serving others. Long-lasting relationships with their followers, trusting their peers and strong personal bonds distinguish servant leaders from traditional styles. Regardless of philosophy of the firm, servant leaders focus on provision of care to others and exhibition of trustworthiness behavior [33]. Via open communication, honesty, moral integrity, and empathy, servant leaders create an atmosphere, where trust can shine and commitment is promoted. As followers perceive care for their wellbeing, and support for their professional and personal development, they are more likely to trust in servant leaders [27].

### **3.4 Neuro-leadership**

This style merges the science of brain with leadership for better motivation, influence and adjusting changes while promoting engagement with the staff to comprehend their responses [34]. Various circumstances trigger reactions in the brain that can be linked to marketing, economics, and leadership. Leaders and leadership can benefit from the emergence of neuroscience and its bond with psychology to better grasp the factors that influence behavior unconsciously. Leaders with knowledge of biology can deploy their awareness towards enhancing performance of those, who work with/for them. Considering the recency of this area, it has been argued that neuro-leaders can generate trust as they understand the mechanisms of brain and implement this understanding in their strategies. In turn, they can shape a climate at workplace that fosters wellbeing, retention, productivity, effectiveness, and more energy for work [34, 35]. Neuro-leaders are to exhibit vulnerability, humility, and integrity alongside being optimist, present, and actively engaging with their subordinates.

Linked to transformational leadership model, an atmosphere of positivity is shaped in the organizational culture that leads to better performance levels. Usage of influence and authenticity for bonds between leader and follower is shared in neuro and transformational leadership styles. Furthermore, servant leadership emphasizes on serving others that fosters positive relationships and promotes appreciative, engaging and integrated behavior from the leader. Organizational trust has been noted to be shaped through *ovation*, *expectation*, *yield*, *transfer*, *openness*, *caring*, *invest*, and *natural* factors [35]. These factors can be seen in **Table 1** with their linkage to leadership traits. Production of oxytocin in the brain is bound to promotion of trust in the behavior of leaders in neuro-leadership style. This chemical is what apprises the notion of trust that is not limited to those whom we are familiar with, but to any social or professional context that we face or interact with. Particular to leaders, this understanding can be used to increase performance, enhance organizational culture, and sow trust. Studies have shown that oxytocin is released significantly amid being trusted or trusting another individual [35].

Neuro-leaders can emphasize on trust through their knowledge of science and psychology, leading the firm towards a higher level of change acceptance, resilience, and retention of talent. When trust is highly embedded in a company, productivity increases, collaboration develops, and relationships among members last longer, when compared to firms in which trust is lower. As trust is a psychological and vital factor, wellbeing and quality of life are affected by its level. For instance, chronic


**Table 1.**

*Trust factors and leadership traits – derived from Zak [35].*

stress can be lowered, which adds to the overall healthiness of individuals. Leaders commonly understand this crucial factor and tend to focus on development of trust in their firms. However, neuro-leaders possess the know-how of enabling trust to grow. Having purpose can release oxytocin similar to sense of trust on a mutually inclusive manner. Work becomes joyous when it is combined with purpose and a trustworthy environment. Thus, neuro-leaders focus on stimulating oxytocin to increase engagement, wellbeing, performance, and other positive elements in the workplace [34, 35].

Neuro-leaders can reshape organizational culture through building factors, situations and practices that trigger oxytocin for individuals in the company.

### **3.5 Virtual/e-leadership**

The environment of work has changed as the technological advances reshape our world. Virtual or online platforms now allow people to carry out their work from a laptop regardless of their location. Communication has evolved from its traditional form and individuals can work together without having met each other in person. Accordingly, the context of leadership and management has adjusted to this new business environment [36]. This virtual era has aided firms to become more resilient, and flexible to meet the demands of market and thus, a leadership style that is adequate for this instance is referred to as E-leadership or virtual leadership. The concept can be explained as a means of being influential on behavior, attitude, thoughts and feelings, and performance of workforce through the medium of technology [37]. E-leaders have to overcome the challenges of this modern and advanced working environment. In this sense, both traditional challenges of handling teams and virtual management become apparent.

The role of these leaders are vital as the virtual workplace does not provide constant in-person interaction. It has been noted that leading the virtual workplace is reliant on both transformational and transactional leadership [38]. Efficiency of teams can be enhanced through the aforementioned styles as they can facilitate uncertainty and where trust is not present. Efficiency of online/virtual teams incorporate both satisfaction of employees and the extent of their performance. In such environment, communication can vary from distance to face-to-face depending on the work itself and thus, conflict management becomes more difficult to handle. Due to varying communications, interactions differ from standard and members can grow apart as they do not interact physically. As such, e-leaders face issues regarding coordination, trust building, conflict management, and shared mental settings in their teams. Comparably, this is much more complex than having a traditional organizational format [39].

Accordingly, various levels of work require leaders to have strategies and measurements for each construct. Team level consists of global, shared, and configural

### *Trust in Leader as a Psychological Factor on Employee and Organizational Outcome DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.100372*

constructs [40]. Global construct explains a team-level setting that does not include individual elements [39]. In other words, global features of team are not based on individual characteristics. Shared construct refers to a collective situation, where members share perception (e.g. quality or extent of cooperation and coordination to task completion among tem members). Experiences, attitudes, perception, values, cognitions, and behaviors that are common among the members are referred to as the shared construct [40]. Cohesion of the team, its norms, climate, and mental models are among the shared constructs. Similar to shared construct, configural features of a team reside in the characteristics of individual team members. This construct includes pattern, variations and array of each members' characteristics such as, interpersonal network density of the team, its personality composition, and diversity (e.g. age).

E-leaders are aware of the abovementioned constructs and utilize this understanding to overcome challenges of lack of social presence among team members. This lack leads to decreased trust, which e-leaders must control through collective identity and proper communication means for their teams. Thus, e-leaders endeavor to establish a common meaning and perspective so that trust is enhanced [37]. In this sense, a number of factors are influential on trust in virtual teams such as, time, culture, geographical proximity and interactions that can be both online and face-to-face. As virtual systems are temporary, trust in such systems is also not permanent. This is mainly due to lack of direct management. Therefore, trust has been noted to be instant in a virtual setting. As virtual teams are vulnerable, trust becomes more important and difficult to establish. Hence, the strength of transformational leadership has been proven to be significant in this case, more than transactional. Both styles are linked to virtual settings and their effectiveness in establishing collective trust has been shown. Through expression of concern for needs of members, a transformational leader can generate trust, and exhibition of will to achieve the goals of the group. This is while transactional leader establishes trust through maintaining their promises and showing respect and fairness. It is imperative that trust is built so that a virtual team can obtain its goals and remain efficient. As interactions are coordinated, existence of trust enhances performance and increases satisfaction for the individuals in the team.

Leaders use different means of technology to provide feedback, signals and messages through an integrated format and tailored tones for each individual in the team. This is referred to as media richness that is a moderating factor for e-leaders in online settings of work, and its efficiency that is based on trust and cohesion [37].

Especially in the occurrence of global pandemic, virtual leaders have become more crucial for organizations. These leaders can aid the business to survive and avoid bankruptcy. E-leaders operate remotely and maintain virtual interactions with more emphasis on those, who might have issues with the technology and thus, are less likely to trust and communicate through virtual settings [41]. Ethical issues, cultural differences, and communication means are main challenges of building trust for e-leaders alongside usage of technology in a manner that will keep the leader effective. In this sense, e-leaders rely on education, training, and development practices to build trust for their followers, and they endeavor to maintain a high standard of communication, and coordinating tasks among team members.

### **4. Conclusion**

Leaders can deploy different aspects of highlighted models in this chapter so that their approaches are enhanced and developed. While some characteristics are deeply embedded in individuals, recent studies show that organizational elements,

### *The Psychology of Trust*

culture, environment, and psychological dimensions such as, coping mechanisms, burnout, and wellbeing are influential. This suggests a pathway for leaders to adjust their styles with current demands of business in the modern world, especially during and after global pandemic of Covid-19, which has drastically changed work environment. Resilience, flexibility, and change are essential for leaders to maintain competitiveness in markets. Thus, regardless of its difficulty or uncertainty, leaders should endeavor to effectively lead their firms towards sustainable advantages, and higher levels of productivity. Leaders can adjust their approach towards their followers, considering various elements that can boost trust. In turn, this will lead to better performance and a positive workplace, leading to organizational achievements.

### **Conflict of interest**

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

### **Notes/thanks/other declarations**

The authors would like to show appreciation and gratitude to Mr. Mark Unwin, and Ms. Marjaneh Arasteh.

### **Author details**

Panteha Farmanesh\* and Pouya Zargar Girne American University, Girne, Northern Cyprus, Turkey

\*Address all correspondence to: pantehafarmanesh@gau.edu.tr

© 2021 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

*Trust in Leader as a Psychological Factor on Employee and Organizational Outcome DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.100372*

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[26] Holtz, B.C. and Harold, C.M. (2008), "When your boss says no! The effects of leadership style and trust on employee reactions to managerial explanations", Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, Vol. 81 No. 4, pp. 777-802.

[27] Zargar, P., Sousan, A., & Farmanesh, P. (2019). Does trust in leader mediate the servant leadership style–job satisfaction relationship? Management Science Letters, 9(13), 2253-2268.

[28] Wheatley, M. J. (2006). Leadership and the new science: discovering order in a chaotic world (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.

[29] Rennaker, M. (2006). Servantleadership: A model aligned with chaos theory. The International Journal of Servant-Leadership, 2(1), 427-453.

[30] Lowder, B. T. (2009). The best leadership model for organizational change management: Transformational verses servant leadership. Available at SSRN 1418796

[31] Greenleaf, R. K. (1998). The power of servant-leadership: Essays. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

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[32] Van Dierendonck, D. (2011). Servant leadership: A review and synthesis. Journal of management, 37(4), 1228-1261.

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### **Chapter 6**

## Justice to Generate Trust, Two Aspects of Human Relationships in Management

*Natàlia Cugueró-Escofet*

### **Abstract**

Justice and trust have largely been considered important in organizations, to generate sustainable management practices that when maintained generate improvements over time. Trust is the organizational glue allowing people to enter into mutual benefiting interactions and relationships for a continuous long-term coordination. Trust is unavoidable as not all participants have all the information and should rely on others' decisions. Justice is a personal virtue that affects all the relationship participants, the decision-maker, the recipient and the beholder. Justice is also a perception of these participants about decisions, people involved and results. Justice as a personal virtue is important for the decision-making, but as an organizational value is coming as a set of requisites for organizational formal and informal systems. In this chapter I aim at understanding the foundations of trust, understanding justice dimensions, and finally disentangling the relationship between trust and justice and how both can mutually be cause and effect of each other. I also examine how trust and justice brought together may cause other desired effects into organizational performance. I propose an understanding of the interplay between trust and justice that helps to improve management practices and their design to maintain and promote economical and socially sustainable organizations.

**Keywords:** justice, fairness, trust, ethics, sustainable management, practical wisdom

### **1. Introduction**

Justice has been studied in several organizational disciplines, the most important being ethics and human resource management. But this is not all the picture, as justice has also been studied in some research that fundamentally tries to show how to design systems and decision processes with justice in the core of their formal and informal elements. Trust has been considered the best intangible asset that serves as an invisible glue that sets together people and organizations to coordinate for common goals. Trust is necessary to be in place between people in organizations and between organizations and their stakeholders. Being an intangible, the mechanisms to generate and promote trust are hidden; therefore trust is not possibly exchanged as a normal asset, and in fact, organizations that "buy" trust from their stakeholders usually do not generate anything close to it. The mere fact of entering in a conventional exchange involving trust (try buying with money trust) removes the motives

that people hold when willing to trust others, and even poses red flags that motivate just for the opposite. Trust, when in place, allows performance as a consequence for the long run, promoting socially sustainable organizations.

The relationship between trust and justice has been also considered crucial, as both are aspects that involve social interaction, better fulfillment, and increasing alignment of people's and organizational goals (goal congruence). Many researches in management have concentrated on these two elements, and how both can mutually affect each other. In this chapter I am going to devote time to propose a way of how both are important and should be brought together to promote long run organizational performance and sustainability.

I proceed to study first trust, then justice and eventually the interaction of both, to conclude which may be a good approach to understand both in terms of implications in organizational management. Finally, I end up stressing the importance of ethics and specifically see how ethics come in the form of showing trust and justice to be the crucial embedded aspects of ethical relationships.

Including the ethical dimensions of justice and trust into organizational relationship and coordination allow going beyond the social and psychological characteristics already posed. Then, ethics, or the principles that guide and serve as basis of what should be done, make justice and trust the two intangibles that are the most important in organizational relationships and therefore in the long-run survival of organizations as a social system of coordination, relationships, interactions, and worth exchanges.

### **2. Trust, justice, and a comprehensive interaction model**

Trust has been an elusive concept that has been studied in many fields, most importantly in economics and management. From an economic perspective it is the necessary intangible glue that makes people exchanges progress in a smoother way. Trust should be built to make coordination last, but economists discovered that it is not a commodity that has its own market to be exchanged. This implies that trust has value but there is no price of acquisition, so it is generated in a way that incorporates personal morality and the willingness to do good for ourselves and, in case of trust, for the others. Arrow, a preeminent Nobel awarded economist arrived to this conclusion, as we will show below [1]. In the "Limits of Organization" in fact what Arrow is showing is more the "limits of the markets" to organize interaction, as precisely organizations as a coordination mechanism, involving trust, is what go beyond the pure market reasoning of facilitating exchanges in a pure monetary basis.

Trust is needed when people as consumers decide over a set of potential options, as they eventually chose one option that they trust. But also, into organizations to make people rely on other people assessments and opinions, when they cannot arrive to one personal opinion due to lack of information or expertise. Or complementary to this, when people rely on other's information to form their own opinion.

Justice is both a cause and effect of some specific characteristics that are incorporated into relationships, their process and distributions. Studied as the main moral virtue of character, the mother of moral virtues, it makes people pursue their own good and the overall good of the organization and its participants. Both concepts, trust and justice, are crucial in the ethical dimension of business interactions and relationships.

In the next sections, I am going to study both of them separately and then explain the relationship between the two, to generate socially and economically sustainable organizations. I am going to stress that trust and justice should incorporate their ethical dimension as these are the ones that allow nurturing interactions between people and between people and organizations for the final end people have, which implies fulfilling themselves through their purposes and mutual supporting.

### **2.1 Trust and its foundations**

Trust has been studied in several organizational disciplines, the most important ones being economics and management. Trust is not an easy intangible to study. All incumbents in organizations are talking about trust generation as one of the crucial aspects to be promoted to generate involvement in coordination for the common goals, and specifically, a long-term coordination. Brands talk about trust generation and use brand ambassadors for that purpose. Organizations talk about generating trust and care for their employees first and the rest of the stakeholders afterwards. So, all management disciplines talk about trust as the most necessary intangible to be incorporated in their relationships with clients, workers, and all the stakeholders. Trust should be built and not destroyed; these two objectives are clear and widely shared. But how to achieve those goals? This is a complete personal career in any managerial field, no matter which discipline, no matter which organization. All managers care about this but are not sure how to implement it successfully. Another aspect of trust is that it is hard to build and easy to lose in any reputational dispute, so it is not only that trust is important, but managing any short-term reputational effects over the trust that has been long term generated, is also very important (i.e. it is important to note that as people have their own perceptions of trust, managing them is important, and making them close to factuals).

One of the scholars worried about trust has been Kenneth Arrow. In his book "The Limits of Organization", Arrow considers trust as the necessary glue of economic systems. Trust, according to Arrow, is elusive and non quantificable, and without trust desired transactions do not occur [1]. In fact, he considers that trust is in the boundaries between authority and responsibility, as a crucial aspect that has value but not clearly an exact and known transactional price. Therefore, in Arrow's words, if you have to purchase trust, you are not really sure about what you have really bought. In fact, we can even say that when you try to put trust as a mere exchange good, what happens is that at some point you force people to concentrate in mere motivations that imply short-term win/lose analyses. Then the prophecy self-fulfills and finally you have people that usually mistrust the rest and only focus on the short term.

So, if trust is not a commodity this means that cannot be easily transacted. Thus, it is difficult to know how to generate and destroy trust which makes more important its study as a worth ethical characteristic of economic and organizational systems. And on top of that, trust is unavoidable in exchanges and coordination, if we want it to last, so the fact is that trust is not exchangeable easily but at the same time it is a must.

In fact, organizations that try to buy trust among their employees are paving the way to precisely generate the opposite. Why? Because, people are easily aware that the interest of the organization is instrumentally using trust as an excuse for something else, so not being transparent of their real interest and purpose, so ending up generating just the opposite: distrust. So, looking for trust generation should bring something genuine in place so people could think it is for the best of all, not merely a few or for some spurious organizational interest.

Arrow was a preeminent economist, and his last work was devoted precisely to the nature and value of trust, that he considered an ethical concept, to be necessary in economic interactions. He considers trust to be the most efficient lubricant in social interactions as it allows to save lots of resources. Therefore, he looks at trust as an ethical aspect with real pragmatic value, so, trust is not only a nice thing to have in organizations but a necessary ethical requisite. Markets and ethics are confluent, and this confluence needs specific attention and implementation. In the end morality is unavoidable to get markets that work [2]. You should be more or less confident that persons interacting in a market generally act in a morally sound way and so should build relationships that make them trust each other. From the point of view of an economist, Arrow considered trust as a social norm based on morality, that equals transparency, integrity, and honesty to make reciprocal social interactions follow the right path to bring good for everyone. The fact that Arrow considers trust, and ethics (as the broader recipient of the first), as the foundational aspects that make organizational deals work, is seeing trust as the cause of worth relationships in business.

To put it simply, trust in its minimal approach implies 1) two persons, the trustor and the trustee, 2) evaluation from trustor to decide whether to follow the trustee advice in something of his or her interest, 3) an act from the trustee that shows whether the trustee honors or betrays the trustor's trust on him or her, and 4) an evaluation of the interaction from the trustor of whether it has been worth to trust the trustee.

Following this simple trusting mechanism, several definitions of trust have been posed from the researchers' community. There is a broad conceptual definition of trust that summarizes the concept in a meaningful way. According to Zand, trust is composed by the "actions that increase one's vulnerability to another whose behavior is not under one's control in a situation which the penalty one suffers if the other abuses that vulnerability is greater than the benefit one gains if the other does not abuse this vulnerability" [3]. So, there is something to lose from the trustor's perspective. Also, not honoring trust from the trustee can have some short-term surplus gain compared to honoring it (so trustee is better off when not honoring trust compared to honoring it), because otherwise, there is simply a win-win game, without any need for trust to be in place. Of course in this situation of win-win, the trust specific interaction does not exist, but it could happen that trust over that person in general exists anyway, the issue is that the trust interaction does not start, or it is not even necessary when everyone earns trusting the other, usually, trusting in a specific moment in time, should imply having some tradeoff, so there is something to lose when the trustee honors trust compared to some gain for taking advantage of not honoring it. The same happens for the trustor that she/he is worse off in case the trustee does not honor the trust compared to honoring it.

So, first, there is the decision to trust, and enter into a trustworthiness evaluation (from the trustor about the trustee), and afterwards the decision to honor the trust (from the trustee). Of course, for trust to last, both parties (specially the trustor) should evaluate how worth has been the actual interaction and therefore as a consequence how probable it is to trust the other party again. Meaning, how probable is to enter into a long-lasting trust, that is the glue that is needed in Arrow's terms [4].

But which is the process of trust generation, and which the process of mistrust generation or trust destruction? More recently, organizational scholars have tried to see trust as a sequence of personal dynamics that involve at least two parties, in which, one of the two (trustor) decides whether to assign to the other party (trustee) the required trustworthiness. In case the required trustworthiness is assessed and the trustor considers it enough, then this makes the trustor trust the trustee. As Dietz believes, there is a basic dynamic, common to all trust encounters, in which "an assessment of the other party's trustworthiness which informs a preparedness to be vulnerable that, in genuine acts of trust, leads to a risk-taking

### *Justice to Generate Trust, Two Aspects of Human Relationships in Management DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.103058*

act" [5, p. 215]. Then, trust, looked at this way, is a consequence of trustworthiness (defined as a perception of trust placed on a person who is evaluated as to whether he or she deserves to be trusted or not).

So, trust is a consequence of trustworthiness which acts then as a cause. So, it is a risk-taking activity that involves some time of perceptional process of the trustor about the trusted party (trustee).

Some researchers consider that there are several types of trust, for instance rational calculative trust, altruistic trust, or blind trust, or also depending on the parties, if these are two individuals, the trust is labeled "personal trust," or in case of involving organizations, then it is called "institutional trust" [6].

But, other scholars, like Dietz, suggest that trust can be considered as general trust experience process that, depending on the individual and group characteristics, may differ in how this universal trust experience or process occurs, and which steps are more or less prevalent when compared to the others. This group of scholars consider that different evaluations of trustworthiness, cognitions, and actions of trust will thus originate different effects coming from the trust experience [5].

Then, trust is a choice? Not always, as people may be obliged to enter into trust, as maybe they are interdependent to the other party. In this situation there is no decision of trusting the trustee, so this specific condition is not there, but still the rest of the trust process remains. In this case, trust is not a decision, but the process of generating trust should occur for sure. So risk and interdependence are intrinsic elements of trust, the definition then being more a general one, so trust is 'the willingness to be vulnerable in conditions of risk and interdependence' [7]. Considering trust this way, trust is not a cooperative behavior or a choice of taking some risk, but instead a situation in which risk and interdependence may generate necessarily an evaluation that once is positive, conduces to trust generation, and then, implies cooperation and taking the risk.

But one caution here, the mere existence of risk and interdependence may not need trust process to occur. In some cases there is only the need to calculate to arrive to a decision; then, it is not easy if this can be considered "calculative trust" or really trust is not even in place nor needed [8]. Boundaries of the concept of trust still exist and there is not a complete agreement between researchers.

In all instances, even if trust is a decision or a situation in which there is some obligation to be interdependent with some other party, trust requires an evaluation from the trustor about the trustworthiness of the trustee. This trustworthiness is a construct formed by the perceptions of some trustee's aspects, that were revised in an integrative paper by Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman [9].

When assessing trustworthiness people evaluate the following three aspects of the trustee: ability, benevolence, and integrity. However, in a more recent paper about trust quoting this research by Mayer et al., it has been argued that "the Mayer et al. definition misses an important aspect of trust, though: in order for the situation to be meaningful, the potential trustee has to have something to gain by performing an action that is not favorable to the interests of the trustor. If not, the interests of the two people are perfectly aligned and thus, in general, there should be no problem" (8, p3). Meaning again, that boundaries of trust are still there in discussion. This latest boundary incorporates, then, the avoidance of trustee's opportunistic behavior, seen from the perspective or assessment of the trustor [10]. This evaluation of the trustworthiness of the trustee is done in some specific situation, that is, the specific "trust encounter" or in other words, the trust exchange.

This vision of trust being a consequence of trustworthiness incorporates morals, and each of the three aspects go parallel to the Aristotle concepts incorporated into his book Rhetoric. Ability corresponds to Aristotle's concept of "intelligence." integrity to Aristotle's "character," and benevolence to Aristotle's "goodwill". Then,

the Aristotle concept of persuasion that would imply making appealing what a trustee says to convince others of being trusted is linked to the building blocks of the trustworthiness concept, a very successful construct in the literature of organizational trust.

In general, when trusting someone implies an assessment about this person's consistency (sometimes even we think that this person in that matter is even more consistent than ourselves), to actually make this person capable of putting into practice what is good for all (also ourselves) according to his or her system of values. Then what we in the end trust is his or her capacity to do that, to act in that specific ethical way. In consequence, we think that the trustee is a person that shows the integrity between his or her actions and values and does this for the good of the ones involved in the relationship or also for the entire organization (in case of he or she acting on its behalf). Then trust is linked to believing from the trustor's perspective that the trustee is a virtuous person and so pursues the good. Here comes the ethical part of trust, that is, the trustee's capability of making right choices about what is good to be pursued. Right choices imply deciding over which objectives area good, and it is here when justice comes to place into the trust equation. As being good and right implies being just. So, looking at the ethical dimension of trust, this implies we trust someone because we consider she or he is the one that is just when deciding, and therefore incorporates in the decision-making, standards of just behavior. We trust in his or her justice standards.

In conclusion, we trust someone because the choices he or she usually makes are leading to generate just outcomes; therefore this person shows up justice standards and learns and evolves to individually increase these justice standards over time. We are going to examine justice as the moral virtue that managers need to put in place to generate trust. Managers should include justice into their decision-making process to generate trustworthiness and therefore trust among organizational relationships between individuals and between individuals and the organization.

But first, I should examine justice as a crucial concept in many disciplines, including management, to finally look into the concepts that are worth to be built-in trust generation.

### **2.2 Justice in organizational relationships**

Justice has been studied in several organizational disciplines, the most important ones being ethics and human resource management. But these are not the only ones. Justice is studied in management control systems to show that managers should design systems and decision processes with justice in mind (formal and informal management control systems with justice incorporated) [11]. Justice is also the basis for the full theory of law, and it is also a social norm, in the discipline of sociology. In ethics or normative theories justice is considered a virtue or a mandatory set of requisites for a worth societal scheme. I am going to revise all the concepts of justice and how they have been integrated to some extent.

Organizational justice has started some decades ago, with the study of the perceptions of justice that people have regarding aspects related to processes, distributions, relationships, and information. Under the label of 'organizational justice', perceptions of justice from organizational participants have been rated to decide whether the organization or the manager is fair or not. Organizational justice is formed by four justice types: distributive, procedural, informational, and interpersonal, depending on the aspect of perceptions people focus on. Distributive justice refers to the perception of what people receive, as rewards or resources, tangible or intangible. Procedural justice asks about the perceptions regarding the processes to arrive at any decision that people consider may generate some effect upon them.

### *Justice to Generate Trust, Two Aspects of Human Relationships in Management DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.103058*

Informational justice refers to the fairness people perceive about the information a manager shares and delivers in the process of deciding. And interpersonal justice measures fairness of the treatment received by a decision-maker in decision processes that affect the recipient. Research has linked organizational justice and close constructs to many desired performance effects in organizations [12]. Recently in the actual investigations around sharing economy, organizational justice has been found as a requisite to build socially sustainable organizations over time, as it serves as an antecedent of knowledge sharing among organizational participants [13].

The entire field of organizational justice has usually evolved through empirical enquiry. Researchers have studied perceptions and how people react to these aspects of distributions, procedures, information, and interpersonal treatment. The underpinning of this reasoning relies on Adams' equity theory [14]. Adam's equity theory states that people compare their own ratios of output and input with the same ratios of others, which is similar to Aristotle's concept of merit. Of course, there are other underlying mechanisms for people to judge fairness, in which people assess what they actually receive compared to what they think they "ought to" receive [15]. In this last one, some ethical standards about what should be are necessary. In this respect the worries are not about deciding between ethical standards and which are sounder, but in understanding that people when assessing fairness have implicit in mind some ethical standards. Both approaches are based on psychology, and some way of looking at justice as a subjective aspect of people's thinking, without caring about which should be the good justice for everyone, or the good thinking of justice or ways to compare which thinking of justice is better suited than the other to generate the good.

But some questions still remain unanswered, as, for instance, are some concepts of justice better than others? Is there a way to decide which justice is better suited to generate the good? And this is the type of questions answered by ethic theories. Ethics is concerned about what is good and what is better. The ethical individual reasoning, subjective in nature, that makes people assess something to be fair or not, treats justice as a black box, subjective and personal, and does not care about the actual black box, containing some specific justice definition or standards. In fact, it presumes all individual standards of justice are equally good. But, here is when ethical reasoning enters into the picture to underline that some justice norms are a central requirement to create good societies for everyone, and therefore, justice is the foundation for a correct functioning of society that aims at providing high levels of happiness and common good to its constituent members [16, 17].

Therefore, once entering into the philosophy and ethical domains, some concepts like justice norms and justice standards appear to be defined, and along with them, specific ways to reason which requirements are needed to generate the best conditions for justice, that in turn may be the foundations of the good and the better.

There is an ongoing discussion of whether justice is a fact or more an ideal to be attained, so a desirable value. And in fact, justice may be, to some extent, both. Of course, justice is not only what people thinks is just, as people can be misled. But justice is also not only what some ethical standards think it is.

Both aspects of justice are important and correspond to different concerns. Normative research remains into the "ought to" type of reasoning that does not attempt to discover at all "what actually is". The same with looking at what people perceive as just. This can indicate whether some justice is in place and, of course, can be an indicator of what people think regarding justice, but these perceptions cannot be a guide to generate norms of what "ought to be" and following implementations. All of these have their own role, as perceptions of justice indicate the actual state of justice implementation and justice while the "ought to be" justice should

guide what reasonably people should follow to achieve a long-run just result in their interactions.

But people's actual subjective thinking of what ought to be is also linked to the ethical reasoning of what ought to be. Some research has focused on interconnecting both types of queries, to find out whether people's concepts of justice are actually aligned to the notions ethicists claim justice to be. From existing data, we know that favorability tend to be correlated to positive perceptions of justice of actual outcomes received, meaning that we believed we deserve (and find it just), the outputs that favor us. In specific distributions, people tend to value just what they positively receive (as they believe they deserve it) and unjust when they are not receiving anything (as they think they deserve it), even if in the normative sense it does not follow justice requirements. This is even stronger in some real and actual situations and not some hypothetical ones. In the hypothetical people tend to be more prompt to actually match what they think about justice ought to be and what theories reason justice ought to be.

Both types of justice, perceptions of fairness and justice as a virtue or ideal for systems and decision-making processes, have some connections and attempts of integration. In fact, moral motives are a very strong psychological motivation to care about justice, even if there is nothing to gain personally in this specific caring. It means people see justice as a moral value and not just a means to achieve selfish ends. Some research asks respondents how they perceive the work behavior "ought to be" and how they perceive "actually is." And surprisingly these are not that far away. This means that, first, as my actual subjective "ought" thinking is not far from the philosophical normative theories, and as I try to be consistent with this, in the end what I do tends to get closer to what I should do, over time. And when asked about perceptions I tend to be consistent on what I think it should be and what I think it actually is regarding what it should be.

Then not all organizational groups think the same; for instance managers think they are implementing justice following this "ought to be" standard, whereas the rest of the organization thinks differently, as they report managers acted differently from what they ought to [18]. All stated before is important, as understanding normative theories people adhere to can improve predictions. And for ethicists, empirical studies about perceptions can also indicate the behavioral and perceptual constraints of justice desired ideals, and how far or close to the standards people think the others and themselves are.

But we should also be aware that differences exist even if researchers come from a similar background. Justice studied from the perspective of organizational justice differs from justice studied from a behavioral sciences perspective. Organizational justice research has assumed individuals are motivated for selfish reasons and by social identities, while behavioral ethics has usually focused on internalized moral convictions and duties and on moral identities. So, justice has different underlying concepts even if the mainstream approach is from a psychological background and through empirical studies. Then it seems justice take several approaches because the questions to answer differ and the visions of humans differ as well.

There is also a paper summarizing justice concepts and providing a useful way to integrating inquiries in a meaningful way in organizational contexts [19]. In this it is explained that a full concept of justice across disciplines would be difficult to incorporate and arrive at. But, instead, we should be aware of the matters and questions around justice that are responded following each approach.

Investigation of perceptions alone cannot replace reflection and discussion about justice. Many situations in organizations reflect this. Imagine the case of an organization in which employees experience a really bad environment, even if they are given voice to express it. And this given voice has not positively converted into

### *Justice to Generate Trust, Two Aspects of Human Relationships in Management DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.103058*

a real change. When they are asked about "procedural justice" they rate it high. However procedural justice is upheld, the voice they are actually given has no real impact on their actual working conditions. So, managing group's perceptions of justice without addressing real issues of power distribution and safety at the workplace could be judged as unjust from a beholder perspective or from an ethical point of view, even if the worker is rating justice high.

This late example does not mean that perceptions of justice are not important, if correctly managed for the good purposes and for the change towards a greater justice environment. In fact, if we just follow a normative approach without caring for actual perceptions about justice, this dogmatic approach can generate unhappiness in case people's preferences are not incorporated to some extent, or people feel they are not capable to follow the normative approach in place. And moreover, some existing normative approaches are a close system and are simply obsolete. Many normative systems are closer to societal norms at some past point in time rather than being a truly humanistic approach for promoting the rights of all. It should be important to create a paved way to change the current norms for some better ones, in all instances. Discussions in normative approaches cannot be avoided in any instance. Even claiming around legality, when legal norms are outdated, is even worse, as in some moments in time, some norms in institutions followed strictly the legality and were totally unjust (i.e. apartheid). So thankfully, societies evolve in terms of updating their normative and legal systems to improve justice over time. Another aspect in terms of normative approaches is that in some specific instances, competing normative approaches exist when solving specific ethical dilemmas, and so, it is not clear which is the best one to choose.

In summary, justice has been studied as a social norm in sociology; as a minimum set of rights or duties in law; as a perception of specific instances regarding distributions, procedures, information, and treatment; in organizational justice; and as a moral motivation in behavioral sciences. All are valid and useful concepts around justice worth taking into account, even if some are invalid or useless because they have become outdated or show incompatible visions of human beings.

With respect to the questions responded and the methods used, organizational justice is concerned with the perceptions of justice from the individual point of view, the group point of view, or the beholder point of view, as a psychological construct. Organizational justice addresses questions regarding why people care about justice, how people judge justice, and which are the effects of justice or injustice perceptions.

The questions aimed at being responded in normative justice theories are concerned with justice as an ideal, precisely trying to figure out what a just society is and should be and what is and should be a just person. Responding to these questions could characterize how should be individuals and socities as to be considered just. Or similarly, knowing the requirements for just leaders, companies and society. This then responds also to the additional query of why justice is important. There are connections between both, as it is presumed that in good (therefore just) societies or organizations, people can develop also personal justice skills and so become fairer over time.

Usually the concepts of justice useful in management implementation are the ones concerned with design of systems and their use, which take a normative approach, and also measuring perceptions of actual justice, once these systems are used and implemented. This is nicely explained in this research that proposes a model of formal and informal justice and how when they are present, generate a greater alignment between the interests of stakeholders, and then build the way to increase justice perceptions of individuals under those systems [20].

### *The Psychology of Trust*

In the next section I am incorporating practical wisdom as the required virtue of knowledge that Aristotle incorporates as crucial for organizational decision-makers. This is also a point to be made as practical wisdom is a necessary requirement for taking commonsensical decisions in specific organizational situations and arrangements and so, part of situational knowledge that a decision maker faces when deciding over anything today that has huge consequences in the long term.

### **2.3 The role of practical wisdom**

It is important to notice that apart from justice, there is another virtue (the main virtue of knowledge, in Aristotelian terms) that has been considered important in managerial decision-making, and this is practical wisdom [21]. Even if some research has given more importance to this virtue than to justice, in fact there are virtues of a different type. Justice is a moral virtue concerned with what is a good objective to pursue, so it comes first. And afterwards, practical wisdom is the process of implementing that objective to improve the chances of success. Also, when there are several possible good (so just) objectives to choose among, practical wisdom assists to determine which is (or are) the best suited to prosper.

Thus, justice is a moral virtue, and therefore informs about which options are good, and practical wisdom is the virtue associated with the process of decision making; once good options (just options) are in place, practical wisdom is necessary for implementing them, so to build the process to be followed for that implementation. Therefore, practical wisdom is not really useful to discuss about the morality but helps to follow a rationalistic approach of implementing the good and just option in place, or to choose details to make proper just alternatives when several of them are available.

In short, justice is the main moral virtue that allows us to have sound objectives in organizations. Once there are alternatives that accomplish justice requirements, situational knowledge, specific for real life implementation, requires managers with practical wisdom. This practical wisdom is the virtue associated with the practical knowledge to apply specific courses of action that have proven possible in specific situations. This process is clearly explained in this article and proves to be generating learning processes of acquiring practical wisdom over time [22]. It seems that as practical wisdom and justice, put together, help to align people's goals with the organization, this can also be seen as a limit for the need of trust in terms of specific transactions, as the general trust on the virtues of the decision maker, which in turn increases this alignment over time, goes for a lesser need of specific transactional trust.

But, it is the combination of practical wisdom as the principal virtue of situational knowledge, and justice as the moral prevalent virtue in social systems and interpersonal relationships for the good, that makes the organization fulfill its endeavor and be socially and economically sustainable over time [23].

### **2.4 Justice and trust virtuous circle in management**

From the trust literature and the seminal ethical literature, we have arrived at the conclusion that justice is a generator of trustworthiness, and therefore potential trust. Justice in this vein is one of the components that are incorporated into the assessment of trustworthiness of the trustee from the trustor's point of view.

Trust is not a considered a virtue, but it is considered an ethical fundamental concept, that is referred as an intangible asset that serves as a glue to increase efficiency of human interaction at the market and organizational level. Also, trust is a result of trustworthiness evaluation, meaning that, to trust someone, first the trustor needs to evaluate whether the trustee deserves to be trusted or not. As a characteristic of the trustee, trustworthiness also has many ethical elements,

### *Justice to Generate Trust, Two Aspects of Human Relationships in Management DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.103058*

mainly involving justice and fairness. Then, trustor should judge the trustee fair to enter into the trusting process; otherwise it is difficult that trust could be built over time. And this can happen in both voluntary and forced trust events in which risk is involved and interdependence exists between the trustor and the trustee.

Justice as a requisite then is an antecedent of trustworthiness and also an antecedent of systems requisites to generate future fairness perceptions, that are also necessary to generate future trustworthiness, once some trust interaction has started. Therefore, justice is both an antecedent and a consequence of trust in someone.

In organizations justice has been considered as a construct based on perceptions, on the form of organizational justice that is the aggregation of perceptions of how fair are procedures, distributions, relationships, and information. It has also been studied as being part of formal systems and system's use (what has been labeled as informal systems). Following this late definition, a seminal paper in the literature of management control systems and justice has considered that there are two types of justice, the formal justice (attached to system design) and informal justice (attached to system use or managerial use of the system, which is the same). Then informal justice is linked to the informal organization and formal justice to the formal organization. Both formal and informal justice have a positive effect over goal congruence, meaning that people that perceive the system and its use are fair tend to increase their alignment between their individual goals and organizational goals over time. So, justice tends to increase the alignment of interests between the institutions and participants [11]. Even if in terms of justice, it seems that informal justice has more potential to actually change the system and generate greater improvements over time rather than formal justice alone, the use following justice criteria seems more appropriate to learn and suggest improvements [24]. So, the ethical or virtuous use of the systems (which mainly should be just) generates greater alignment of goals and greater overall future fairness compared to the mere implementation of formal justice in a mechanical way.

Additional research on the matter uses this underlying relationship between justice and goal congruence, and incorporates also the trust in managers variable [25]. In this model, ex-ante justice (formal and informal), trust in managers, and interest alignment between participants are shown to generate future perceptions of justice over time. This means that when managers use the system following justice requirements, people trust them, their interests are more aligned with the organization, and finally justice is generated also in the long term. This is creating a virtuous cycle, as once this starts, this new justice perceptions reinforce future trust generation, helping to improve the system and its use over time.

Goal congruence or interest alignment on its own, when high also makes people increase fairness perceptions, meaning that it increases how they perceive the justice in all organizational dimensions (distributions, processes, information, and personal treatment). Then, once informal justice is in place, it generates a positive effect trusting managers, and this in turn has a positive effect in future perceptions of fairness that following this virtuous circle feeds again the process of trust generation. The previous virtuous circle, once in place reinforces the alignment between the interests of the organization and stakeholders, increasing the willingness of a shared meaningful purpose.

### **3. Conclusions**

Trust is the most desired intangible to be generated in economic exchanges. Trust functions to bring ethics into the market interactions and into the organizational relationships, which is considered the best way to increase efficiency. The

### *The Psychology of Trust*

big characteristic of trust is that it increments efficiency but in nature is a moral aspect that cannot be traded. In fact, thinking of its tradability makes it clear that we are trading something that we can assure is not trust at all [1]. So, ethics should be incorporated into this with a genuine interest for the good, and when doing so, it is trust, this ethical intangible, that eventually makes the economic world function smoothly and with ease.

But trust needs to be generated, and fundamentally foundations of trust rely on how trust is generated and so, how one party (trustor) makes a specific assessment to what extent the other party (trustee) deserves to be trusted or not. Fundamentally this assessment is based on ability, integrity. and benevolence, psychological characteristics that are found also in the Aristotelian Rhetoric, being there labeled intelligence, character, and goodwill.

The first (ability) is more linked to technical skills and expertise (I am trusting your ability to perform efficiently and effectively some specific tasks and duties), but the other two (character and goodwill) are mainly linked to building the specific virtuous aspects of managers. And which are the aspects of managers that generate trust? Managers generate trust when acting according to what they say and based on a system of values that incorporate virtues, justice being the mother of moral virtues, central to generate the good in organizations. Therefore, managers generate trust when the ones that are affected by their decisions judge they are going to act according to justice for the good of all, not for selfish interests. This good, then, can be judged by the ones that have trusted managers, in terms of justice perceptions related to processes, information, relationships, and outcomes. Once these perceptions are present can feed new trust interactions, which in turn affect future generation of trust and trustworthiness. Justice is an antecedent of trustworthiness, and future justice is an antecedent of future trustworthiness. Thus, the loop generated is clear, and the virtuous circle is clear too. Both trust and justice are crucial ethical dimensions in organizational relationships to serve as the long-term fuel to build social and economic sustainable institutions. Trust cannot be generated out of the blue; instead it needs strong justice implementation and performance to start being generated. Once the virtuous circle is implemented it should be fueled over time, as learning to be fairer is a path of improving character and goodwill of managers that never ends. Ethical standards and justice standards evolve, and managers should evolve too. This learning is necessary to allow trust to increase, as if the process of increasing trust is not in place the process of destroying has, for sure, started.

### **Acknowledgements**

I acknowledge the invaluable help of my colleagues at Open University of Catalonia and IESE Business School for our discussions on the topics of this chapter, mainly Josep Maria Rosanas, my advisor and colleague with whom I have shared uncountable hours of conversation and fruitful debates.

*Justice to Generate Trust, Two Aspects of Human Relationships in Management DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.103058*

### **Author details**

Natàlia Cugueró-Escofet Open University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain

\*Address all correspondence to: ncuguero@uoc.edu

© 2022 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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[2] Arrow KJ. The Economy of Trust. Religion and Liberty. 2006;**16**(3):3-13

[3] Zand DE. Trust and Managerial Problem Solving. Administrative Science Quarterly. 1972;**17**:229-239

[4] Rosanas JM, Velilla M. The Ethics of Management Control Systems: Developing Technical and Moral Values. Journal of Business Ethics. 2005;**57**: 83-96

[5] Dietz G. Going back to the source: Why do people trust each other? Journal of Trust Research. 2011;**1**(2):215-222

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[7] Rousseau DM, Sitkin SB, Burt RS, Camerer C. Not so different after all: A cross-discipline view of trust. Academy of Management Review. 1998;**23**(3): 393-404

[8] Cugueró-Escofet N, Rosanas JM. Trust under bounded rationality: Competence, value systems, unselfishness and the development of virtue. Intangible Capital. 2019;**15**(1): 1-21

[9] Mayer RC, Davis JH, Schoorman FD. An integrative model of organizational trust. Academy of Management Review. 1995;**20**(3):709-734

[10] Williamson OE. The Economic Institutions of Capitalism. New York: The Free Press; 1985

[11] Cugueró-Escofet N, Rosanas JM. The just design and use of Management Control Systems as requirements for

Goal Congruence. Management Accounting Research. 2013;**24**(1):23-40

[12] Greenberg J, Cropanzano RE. Advances in Organizational Justice. Stanford: Stanford University Press; 2001

[13] Cuguero-Escofet N, Ficapal-Cusí P, Torrent-Sellens J. Sustainable human resource management: how to create a knowledge sharing behavior through organizational justice, organizational support. Satisfaction and Commitment. Sustainability. 2019;**11**(5419):1-20

[14] Adams JS. Inequity in social exchange. In: Berkowitz L, editor. Advances in experimental social psychology. 2nd ed. New York: Academic Press; 1965. pp. 267-299

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[16] Finnis J. In: Craig P, editor. Natural Law and Natural Rights. Oxford: Clarendon Press; 1980

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[18] Singer MS. Ethical and Fair Work Behavior: A Normative-Empirical Dialogue concerning Ethics and Justice. Journal of Business Ethics. 2000;**28**(3): 187-209

[19] Cugueró-Escofet N, Fortin M. One justice or two? a model of reconciliation of normative justice theories and empirical research on organizational justice. Journal of Business Ethics. 2014;**124**(3):435-451

*Justice to Generate Trust, Two Aspects of Human Relationships in Management DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.103058*

[20] Cugueró-Escofet N, Rosanas JM. Social dynamics of Justice: The Ex-ante and Ex-post Justice Interplay with Formal and Informal Elements of Management Control Systems. In: Gilliland DDS SW, Skarlicki DP, editors. Social dynamics of organizational justice. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing; 2015

[21] Aristotle. In: Ross WD, editor. revised by Leslie BrownThe Nicomachean Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2009

[22] Cugueró-Escofet N, Rosanas JM. Practical Wisdom for Sustainable Management and Knowledge Sharing. Sustainability. 2020;**12**(4173):1-17

[23] Cugueró-Escofet N, Rosanas JM. The relative role of the intellectual and moral virtues in sustainable management decisions: The case of practicalwisdom and justice. Sustainability. 2020;**12**(1145):1-21

[24] Cugueró-Escofet N, Rosanas JM. Justice: A sufficient condition for goal congruence in management control systems. European Accounting and Management Review. 2015;**2**(2):104-122

[25] Cugueró-Escofet N, Fitó Bertran À, Rosanas JM. Is Justice More Important than Would Be Expected? The Role of Justice in Management Control Systems to Generate Goal Congruence. Social Justice Research: Trust in Managers and Fairness Perceptions; 2019

### **Chapter 7**

## Cultivating Trust in Employee Relations

*Lydia Mhango*

### **Abstract**

At the heart of employment relations is the desire of both management and employees to create an ideal and efficient and effective organisation. However, this does not always happen, and both employers and employees and their representatives share the blame. For employees and their representatives, the "us against them" attitude is a catalyst for distrust. For employers, inflexibility and autocratic leadership styles make effective human resource management extremely difficult. Through interviews with management and union representatives, this experimental research explores causes of distrust, offers solutions and ends by suggesting the adoption of the Soft Human Resource Management (SHRM) approach as a solution to enhance trust in employee relations. The study focused on trust in organisations that have unionised workers.

**Keywords:** trust, cultivation, employee relations, SHRM

### **1. Introduction**

Why do most employees have little or no trust in their employers? We spend many hours of our working lives at the workplace yet we find that to a large extent, there is little or no trust in our employee relations. Generally speaking, in many organisations in Zambia, for whatever reasons the absence of trust exists, the effects are negative on organisational morale and performance, particularly when all parties feel and can justify that their position is right. Justification is always supported with genuine examples, thus making the cultivation of trust difficult. Parties involved become embroiled in investigations and manoeuvres to further justify their positions to prove their stance.

An indicator of the importance of trust in employee relations is the extensive literature that exists on trust in the workplace and in general. Research results on the effects of mutual trustworthiness between labour and management concluded that labour-management representatives must recognise the importance of mutual trustworthiness in employee relations in their efforts to adopt high-performance work systems [1]. Employee's lack of trust in their employers is not a new phenomenon. Researchers acknowledge deep and structurally embedded conflicts of interest and worker alienation Thompson [2]. According to Francois [3], findings on trust in union leaders and the decline in union membership concluded that this is a result of failure by union leaders to lead by example, poor communication, lack of training and unfair practices.

A survey by Deloitte [4] indicates that one-third of the survey participants desire new employment; of this group, almost half cite a distrust in their


### **Table 1.**

*Characteristics of high and low trust.*

company. The Elderman Trust Barometer [5] reported that 82% of employees do not trust their bosses to tell the truth. When employees have little faith in their leaders, businesses experience several negative consequences. Employees feel less invested in the outcome of the business. This results in lower productivity as employees may miss work and deadlines and become indifferent to disciplinary action from managers. Trust in employee relations is important for organisational performance and is linked to outcomes such as reduced employee turnover, better profits and generally improved cooperation among employees. Many employees tend to have negative views about their employers [6] just as many employers have negative views about their employees.

Elgoibar et al. [7] defined trust as "the expectation that the other party will cooperate in the future." Since it is an *expectation*, they further argue that trust and distrust often appear together; that distrust appears mainly when the other party violates the psychological contract1 or formal agreements. In the case of organisations, distrust usually appears in downsizing, corporate restructuring situations or when the information is partial or invalid [7]. Characteristics of both trust and distrust are summarised in **Table 1**:

Examples of behaviours that indicate a lack of trust by employees in organisations include:


<sup>1</sup> The *psychological contract*: the unwritten set of expectations of the employment relationship as distinct from the formal, codified employment contract. Available from: https://www.hrzone.com/hr-glossary/ what-is-a-psychological-contract

### *Cultivating Trust in Employee Relations DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.102950*


Available from: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/trust−the−new− workplace−currency/201405/10−ways−tell−trust−is−lacking−where−you−work.

Despite the importance of trust, organisational environments often challenge the trust that employees bestow on organisations. As trends toward downsizing, restructuring, and temporary employment continues, perceptions of unfair treatment, broken contracts and experiences of betrayal remain a part of the organisational landscape [11].

The above examples of causes of distrust in employers and management by employees are often exacerbated by the "us versus them" attitude, which serves to deepen distrust in the work situation. Much as unions have a legitimate right to organize, they need to guard against the dangers of firstly uniting against management and secondly their leaders focusing on adversities. Probably a weakness in managers, resulting in their positions of authority, is that *they take trust for granted* and assume their employees can be kept at arm's length without guidance on how to improve performance.

<sup>2</sup> Available from: https://www.insperity.com/blog/lack-of-trust-in-leadership/

<sup>3</sup> Available from: https://fierceinc.com/blog/leading-business-problem-3-lack-of-transparency/

### **1.1 Trust models**

Building trust can be a complicated process depending on attitudes. Paul English (2020) [12] quotes HR consultant Robert Fisher that there are four basic trust models shown below:

**Suspicious still**—do not ever trust anyone, even after they have done something nice. *"My relationship with the management is difficult and the management trusts me never and not in any matters. It's not possible to increase trust."* (union representative)—It is not possible to build trust with such a negative attitude. Once betrayed, the reaction can be anger, bitterness, hurt, vengeance, etc. Leaving one believing that they can never trust again, and wondering why they trusted the management in the first place, and believed they would have integrity.

**Suspicious until**—do not trust anyone until they prove themselves. *"Trust should be earned. I definitely can't say that I deem everyone trustworthy until they prove otherwise"* [13]. Thornton [14] writes that trust is eroded by waiting for others to earn our trust in that when we meet new people and immediately think that they have to earn our trust, then we are intentionally withholding trust from them. It is a "wait and see" attitude that leads to Low Trust in **Table 1**.

On the other hand, this is a slightly better attitude that can provide the beginning of trust-building.

**Trust until**—trust people until they screw up. *"If you begin every relationship not trusting that is what you are seeking unconsciously. Trust should be given to all and it is for those people to break that trust and that is when it is taken away. It is called seeing the best in everyone until you are proven otherwise."* [15]. Broken trust is not always easy to mend and it causes people to withhold trust. 'Trust until' is another negative attitude if it is prolonged. Such an attitude should also call for self-examination in that employees may have unrealistic expectations of their employers.

**Trust still**—trust people even after they make mistakes, sometimes even when they hurt you. This attitude works in important relationships necessary for continuity, and perhaps coupled with a genuine apology by the betrayer. Thus, trust is also a risk, and most people are victims of betrayal of one level or another. Kwon4 offers positive advice by suggesting that the only way to know if you can trust somebody again is to trust them. "If we never allow ourselves any vulnerability, we lose out on

<sup>4</sup> Available from: https://tinybuddha.com/blog/trusting-in-the-present-when-youve-been-hurt-in-the-past/

### *Cultivating Trust in Employee Relations DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.102950*

the opportunity to make incredibly deep and meaningful connections that open up our lives in ways that couldn't happen any other way."

People can evolve from the 'suspicious still' to get to 'trust still' stage, i.e., trusting people even after they have wronged you or treated you unfairly. In the workplace, stages 1 (suspicious still) and 2 (suspicious until) are negative and ingredients for distrust. Stage 3 is safe unless people actually 'screw up'. English concludes by saying "People at the positive top of the trust diagram are generally more successful in life than those on the bottom. Part of this is that you often need to trust colleagues to have them perform at their highest levels" [12].

Can organisational employees evolve to stage 4? What techniques can be used to cultivate trust to evolve to this stage? Below are the findings of the study of causes of lack of trust by employees and their representatives in management or employers.

### **2. Findings**

### **2.1 Reasons for distrust: Employees and unions**


to 'broken trust' in relationships. When promises are broken by employers/ management, it increases the magnitude of violations, the number of past violations, and the perception that the offender *intended* to commit the violation and raises distrust. To distrust is to have no confidence in someone or something.

vii. *Inequities in Career Progression and Remuneration*—this is perhaps the most damaging cause of distrust, whether blatantly or subtly practiced. According to Equity Theory, individuals are motivated by a sense of *fairness* in their interactions. Perceptions of inequity create suspicion and tension within employees and drive them to action that will reduce perceived inequity.

### **2.2 Suggestions on how to build trust**

### *2.2.1 Union perspective*

It can be seen that distrust arises as a result of the experiences mentioned above, and that employees have no incentive to be cooperative where there is no trust. To build trust in employee relations, employees and their representatives suggested the following:


From a management point of view, one CEO itemised the following as ways of enhancing trust in the organisation he works for:


et al. [19] which examines three trustee attributes, i.e., ability, benevolence and integrity as predictors of trust in leaders. *Ability* reflects the knowledge, skills and aptitudes of a leader, in both technical areas and general management competencies. *Integrity* is the extent to which a leader is seen to adhere to accepted principles. *Benevolence* is the extent to which a leader is perceived to want to do good to the followers; to be considerate of the follower's needs and interests. Benevolence and integrity are aspects of the leader's character which require time to judge [20]. All the union leaders interviewed did not feel that the CEO possessed all three attributes even after he had held the position for a decade.

### **3. Trust must be mutual**

There is an inevitable destructive potential in the presence of distrust in organisations in that both management and employees and their representatives think that motives and intentions are sinister. The parties, therefore, make efforts to reduce their vulnerability and protect their interests, which encourages a competitive atmosphere.

Organisational success depends on mutual trust. Unfortunately, this may be lacking in most organisations because trust is risky; risky because it involves an element of vulnerability. Vulnerability means openness to be physically or emotionally hurt or wounded. Dr. David DeSteno says, *"The heart of trust is vulnerability. There's something that you need to acquire or achieve, and you need help to do it, but by accepting that help, you make yourself vulnerable"* (Weir, 2013).5 This is a challenge for both employers and employees and their representatives if they are to achieve organisational goals. Building trust requires both parties to take the risk and accept the vulnerability that goes with trust; otherwise, an organisation remains in the tit-for-tat situation which affects performance and morale negatively. During all the times people are at work, cooperation and communication are loaded with risks and likely betrayal. Feelings of betrayal, no matter how small or subtle, lead to distrust. Much as we all try to avoid risks and protect ourselves, we need to choose to trust others at work.

The onus is on the leadership of both management and unions to bring about mutual trust in organisations. They need to honestly assess themselves and ask: "Do the people I lead trust me?" DeSteno further says "the potential benefits from trusting others considerably outweigh the potential losses on average."6 Leaders need to accept that success is *with and through* those they lead, hence the need to earn their trust.

Where trust has been lost, it cannot be built overnight. It takes time and effort and must be evidenced by walking the talk, effective communication and listening to others, shared decision making, team work, rewarding and acknowledging good performance, accepting blame, fairness in all dealings and putting a value on good relationships. Organisational change is difficult but not impossible when the parties are willing to change and encourage psychological comfort at the workplace where more time is spent than in their homes.

Of course, there is always the inevitable situation where jobs are difficult to find resulting in those in employment finding it difficult to criticise authority even in the face of glaring distrust and inequity, for fear of losing their jobs. Such employees revert to boot licking and bad-mouthing colleagues in the hope of advancing their careers. Instead of building trust, such situations build distrust.

<sup>5</sup> https://www.weunlearn.org/blog/trust-detailed-perspective

<sup>6</sup> Ibid

### **4. The soft human resource management approach in building trust**

According to Mayer et al. [19], trust is "the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective to the ability to monitor or control that other party." Trust is therefore a *psychological* state in which a party accepts vulnerability based on the positive expectations of the trustee. In employment relations trust and trustworthiness reveal an underlying antagonistic union-employer relationship.

Features of the human resource management approach to industrial relations include that:


The challenge here is whether human resource practitioners are equipped with the skills to execute these features to foster trust in organisations. An expansion of this approach is the Soft Human Resource Management approach (SHRM).

This paper would like to suggest that Soft Human Resource Management7 (SHRM) an approach where mutual trust exists, offers an ideal and effective management system for organisational performance. SHRM can be compared with McGregor's Theory Y assumptions that: employees enjoy their work and will be committed to the organisation if they are trusted, trained and developed, and work autonomously. Soft HRM (or the Harvard Model), advanced by Beer et al. [21], Walton [22] and Bailey *et al.* [23] lists the key features of soft human resource management which foster trust between management and employees as follows:

### **4.1 Key features of soft human resource management**


<sup>7</sup> Hard HRM on the other hand treats employees as just another resource like tools and machines required to operate the business; their needs are not considered.

From the worker's point of view, Vroom's Expectancy Theory can be applied here, which holds that employees will be motivated when they believe that they can achieve certain goals and that once these goals are achieved they will receive valued rewards. It is a sub-conscious assessment based on "the perceived **trustworthiness** of organisations and their leaders in honouring the social contracts that govern organisational relationships" ([24], p. 158).

SHRM aims to bring about efficiency, profit maximisation and committed employees. Unions are also interested in these goals for the welfare of their members. This can be seen as compatibility between the two, much as trade unions adversarial strength of bargaining power may be seen to weaken. De Silva (1998) states that, "HRM is not per se anti-union and its central themes are not necessarily inconsistent with unionism." Although SHRM does not focus on collective bargaining in the way industrial relations do, collective bargaining involves all mechanisms brought in to reach a consensus between trade unions and employers. When viewed in this way conflict is reduced and compatibility meets requirements, promoting human capacity building and sustainable productivity. What is required is cooperative unionism since both SHRM and trade unionism require employees' loyalty this confirms compatibility [25].

SHRM sounds appealing but requires research into its feasibility in Zambia. This is a limitation of the study.

### **5. Conclusion**

Although trust may be a desirable resource, it is often fragile, elusive and difficult to cultivate [26]. For both employers and employees and their representatives, it is important to firstly recognise the presence of distrust and trace the origins. Both parties should also be willing to take the risk of trusting each other despite the vulnerability involved. Accepting this risk should considerably reduce the perpetual conflict and unnecessary suspicions about each other's motives and intentions in their activities and decisions. Unions would do well to organise workshops on conflict resolution and how to handle distrust. Organisations should consider employing the soft human resource management approach to enhance trust in employee relations. With this approach people can evolve from the 'suspicious still' to get to 'trust still' stage. As English concludes in the trust diagram, "People at the positive top of the trust diagram are generally more successful in life than those on the bottom. Part of this is that you often need to trust colleagues to have them perform at their highest levels."

### **Thanks**

Most of the data for this paper were gathered from interviews with workmates. I wish to thank all the people that participated in the preparation of the paper. They wish to remain anonymous but I particularly thank the unnamed CEO, the union leaders and the many workmates who willingly gave their thoughts and ideas on how trust can be cultivated in a work environment.

*Cultivating Trust in Employee Relations DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.102950*

### **Author details**

Lydia Mhango The Copperbelt University, Kitwe, Zambia

\*Address all correspondence to: lydia.mhango@gmail.com

© 2022 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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[13] McAllister. How Leaders Can Build Trust in Teams. Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University; 2020. Available from: https://fisher.osu. edu/blogs/leadreadtoday/blog/ how-leaders-can-build-trust-in-teams

[14] Thornton LF. Should Trust Be Freely Offered or Conditionally Earned? Leading in Context; 2013 Available from: https://leadingincontext. com/2013/01/09/should-trust-befreely-offered-or-conditionallyearned/

[15] Good Therapy.org Staff. The Psychology of Trust Issues and Ways to Overcome Them. GoodTherapy; 2014. Available from: https://www. goodtherapy.org/blog/

### *Cultivating Trust in Employee Relations DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.102950*

the-psychology-of-trust-issues-andways-to-overcome-them

[16] Greer SL, Falkenbach M. Social partnership, civil society, and health care. In: Greer SL, Wismar M, Pastorino G, et al., editors. Civil Society and Heath: Contributions and Potential [Internet]. Copenhagen (Denmark): European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies; 2017. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ books/NBK459038/

[17] Johnson W. 4 Benefits of Sharing Information in the Workplace. Small Business Trends; 2017. Available from: https://smallbiztrends.com/2017/01/ benefits-of-sharing-information-in-theworkplace.html

[18] Adams JS. Inequity in social exchange. In: Berkowitz L, editor. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. Vol. 2. New York: Academic Press; 1965. pp. 267-299

[19] Mayer, Roger C., et al. An integrative model of organizational trust. The Academy of Management Review, 20, no. 3, 1995, pp. 709-734. Available from: www.jstor.org/stable/258792 [Accessed: September 6, 2021].

[20] Colquitt JA, Salam SC. Foster trust through ability, benevolence, and integrity. In: Handbook of Principles of Organizational Behavior: Indispensable Knowledge for Evidence-Based Management. 2015. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/ publication/316066604\_Foster\_Trust\_ through\_Ability\_Benevolence\_and\_ Integrity

[21] Beer M, Spector B, Lawrence P, Quinn Mills D, Watson R. Managing Human Assets. New York: Free Press; 1984. Available from: https://onlinelibrary.wiley. com/doi/abs/10.1002/hrm.3930240310

[22] Walton R. From control to commitment in the workplace. Harvard Business Review. 1985;**63**(4):77-84. Available from: https://hbr.org/1985/03/ from-control-to-commitment-in-theworkplace

[23] Bailey C, Gratton L, Hope-Hailey V, McGovern PG, Stiles P. Soft and hard human resource management: A reappraisal. Journal of Management Studies. 1997;**34**(1). Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/ publication/38176140\_Soft\_and\_Hard\_ Models\_of\_Human\_Resource\_ Management\_A\_Reappraisal

[24] Caldwell C, Hayes LA, Bernal P, et al. Ethical stewardship – Implications for leadership and trust. Journal of Business Ethics. 2008;**78**:153-164. DOI: 10.1007/s10551-006-9320-1

[25] Daemane M. Human Resources Management (HRM) and Trade Unions' Compatibility: 'Soft-Hard' Model Digestion for Human Capacity Building and Sustainable Productivity at Workplace. 2014. Available from: https://jetjetems.scholarlinkresearch. org [Accessed: December 15, 2021].

[26] Kramer RM, Cook KS. Trust and Distrust in Organizations: Dilemmas and Approaches. New York City: Russell Sage Foundation; 2004. pp. 1-18. Available from: https://www.jstor.org/ stable/10.7758/9781610443388.4 [Accessed: December 15, 2021].

### **Chapter 8**

## Spoken and Unspoken between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous: Trust at the Heart of Intercultural Professional Collaborations

*Emilie Deschênes and Sebastien Arcand*

### **Abstract**

Several contemporary societies are facing important issues regarding the relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations. The difficulties of establishing dialogs based on lasting positive intercultural relations have repercussions within the institutions and organizations of a given society. Between the affective and relational sphere and the professional sphere, links are forged, which reproduce complex social relationships, even conflicting ones. This is the context in which our chapter's proposal fits. By focusing on the determinants of social relations at work in these daily encounters between non-Indigenous and Indigenous in the workplace and the bonds of trust, or mistrust, which ensue, we will question the premises of social relations between non-Indigenous and Indigenous. These questions emanate from various research studies that we have carried out in recent years in organizations in the mining and energy sectors.

**Keywords:** trust, Indigenous peoples, institutions, organizations, emotions

### **1. Introduction**

*It will take many years to mend broken relationships and trust in Indigenous communities and between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people* [1].

Trust is at the heart of many organizational strategies from different sectors. Yet while the outcome of trusting relationships is indisputable, its determinants are less well known. In various organizational contexts, organizations implement strategies to build trust, which will be adjusted according to contexts, such as in the case of a multicultural organization. In this chapter, we go further by analyzing the determinants of social relations that lead to the trust of Indigenous workers and the extent to which trust influences social and professional integration as well as retention of these workers. To do this, first, we present the issue of current Indigenous employment conditions and its link with trust. The next three sections deal respectively with the conceptual and theoretical framework on which trust is based, examining the determinants that influence the confidence of Indigenous workers in the mining and power generation sectors, and then analyzing and defining interpretation of the elements selected.

### **2. Problem**

According to the National Native Economic Development Council (CNDEA), which has developed economic development indices to assess the general results of the various communities, Indigenous remain markedly excluded from economic systems [1]. Despite the fact that an improvement in economic development was observed between 2006 and 2016 [1], it remains lower than that of the Quebec or Canadian population. Likewise, the level of poverty and food insecurity are problematic in several indigenous communities [2, 3] and their well-being index, assessed according to income, level of education, infrastructure. Housing, as well as the employment rate, show poor results on most indicators [2–4]. In this context, employment is of major importance for Indigenous people and for the cultural, social, and economic development of their communities.

The various statistics available related to work or the labor market for Indigenous present data that are not very comparable to the rest of the Quebec and Canadian population. In particular, few jobs are available in the communities, the unemployment rate is higher among Indigenous than among Quebeckers and Canadians, and employment rates are lower [5]. According to Posca [6], the gap between the participation rate and the employment rate of Indigenous people indicates that Indigenous people are less likely to be employed than non-Indigenous people in the labor force. Then, data from the Labor Force Survey show that Quebec has a lower employment rate (64.3%) among Indigenous than the other Canadian provinces and territories [7].

However, Indigenous people represent a significant labor pool. Their birth rate is higher than in the Quebec and Canadian populations and the demographics, in both community and urban settings, are growing strongly. For example, according to Howard et al. [8], approximately 600,000 young Indigenous will arrive on the job market before 2026. However, even if we note an increasing presence of Indigenous workers on the Quebec and Canadian labor market [9], the number of jobs available in the community is insufficient to allow everyone to be professionally active. One solution lies in the possibility of working outside their community, in an urban setting or in organizations located close to their community, for example, with natural resource operators.

For those who choose to work in non-Indigenous organizations, there are many challenges. Among other things, intercultural professional meeting is inevitable between indigenous and non-Indigenous workers and requires the establishment of a relationship based on trust, as a necessary condition to allow the socioprofessional integration of indigenous workers [10]. However, it appears, in general, and for all the historical and current reasons known [11], that trust is not very present in the relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous and that some are tinged with mistrust. For example, trust in public services in general is low [12–14]. At the same time, mistrust in criminal justice is great [15, 16], and Indigenous people have developed a constant and deep mistrust of Canada's political and judicial systems ([11], p. 215). In short,

*"The destructive effects of residential schools, the Indian Act and the Crown's inability to honor treaty promises have undermined relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. The most significant damage is the breakdown of trust between the Crown and Indigenous peoples. This rupture must be repaired" ([11], p. 204).*

This lack of confidence is also reflected in non-Indigenous organizations where Indigenous people want to take jobs. However, the non-Indigenous organization may be seen by the Indigenous worker as a representative of society and

*Spoken and Unspoken between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous: Trust at the Heart… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101721*

relationships are affected. While the socioeconomic development of Indigenous people requires successful integration into employment, it also requires a multidimensional approach [1]. Based on the results of previous research, we believe that trust between Indigenous and non-Indigenous workers is one of those dimensions that needs to be addressed. Confidence makes possible the social cohesion necessary in a professional framework and allows the regulation of intercultural relations between workers, even the reduction of the uncertainty or insecurity that indigenous workers may feel when faced with non-Indigenous people [17]. In addition, it is reputed to facilitate the socio-professional integration of Indigenous workers [10]. It is therefore relevant to analyze the determinants of social relations that influence the trust between Indigenous workers in their colleagues. This reflection also aims to provide possible solutions to facilitate confidence in this intercultural context as a means of facilitating the social and professional integration of indigenous workers.

### **3. Objectives and research questions**

Our objective is, on the one hand, to update and enrich the results of previous1 research using secondary data from different industrial sectors (mining and energy). On the other hand, it aims to take stock of the determinants of trust in these sectors and to determine the potential impact of trust on social and professional integration and on the retention of indigenous workers in nongovernmental organizations.

Two questions guide our thinking:


### **4. Conceptual and theoretical framework**

### **4.1 A definition of trust**

*"Trust is honoring the bonds that unite us" (Indigenous worker).*

The concept of trust is complex, multidimensional and is characterized differently depending on the context and the people involved. It is characterized by notions of expectations, anticipation, and positive belief [18–25]. In the organization, the worker who trusts another worker knows that he can anticipate some of his behaviors or attitudes: he will therefore not be largely surprised or caught off guard. He trusts, because he has no apprehension or uncertainty vis-à-vis the behaviors and attitudes of the other and following the considering and the calculation of the

<sup>1</sup> This research focused on the determinants of trust in social and professional relationships between indigenous and non-Indigenous workers in the education sector. These are two groundbreaking research studies that focus on the training and employment integration of Indigenous workers. The first was carried out as part of a postdoctoral fellowship at HEC Montreal. (Deschênes, 2017, unpublished), and the second was commissioned by the Niskamoon Society ([17], unpublished).

risks related to his decision and according to the gains or losses he might encounter. For example, he will trust if he can expect, for example, the benevolence, competence, or reliability of the other. From his thoughts, he knows if it is in his best interests to trust. If so, he determines that the other is trustworthy, because his interests or motives lead to the almost certainty that the other will be loyal. At least he is better able to assess reliability and the likelihood of loyalty.

On the other hand, trust is a risk that makes the worker a little more vulnerable, a little more subordinate, and a little more dependent [24, 26–29]. To gain confidence, a step must be taken, a leap in commitment [24, 28], which goes beyond reason alone and which can be emotional, spontaneous, or based on feelings. In a sense, for a worker, trust is the sign of a reciprocal belief in interdependence, as if the other became just as vulnerable as him [26, 30] and that he could lose, or win, in a more or less equal relationship at the start. It nevertheless implies a non-definitive character, depending on the evolution of the relationship [29, 30].

Calculation and rationality are the basis of the reluctance to agree to trust: if the worker always had more to gain than to lose, it would no longer be a matter of either a risk or a risk uncertainty. In addition, trust is built up gradually [15, 23], with varying degrees of involvement.

Then, the characteristics of intercultural environments, those that involve the encounter between Indigenous and non-Indigenous workers, complicate this decision whether to trust the other. Among other things, uncertainties arise, which are linked to the ignorance of the other and the difficulty of anticipating their behavior and attitudes toward them [17, 26, 31, 32]. As in other settings that involve other complexities, trust becomes dynamic [15, 18, 19, 30], as it develops, maintains, decreases, or breaks. The bonds of the members of a team in which the expertise and roles are complementary "must" to some extent be based on a feeling of trust: the work of some depends on the work of others. In such a context of reciprocity, the interest in trusting is great since the mutuality of benefits facilitates the calculation on which the decision will be made.

### **4.2 Affective and cognitive foundations of trust**

### *"Building trust, encouraging inclusion and fostering reconciliation" ([11], p. 340).*

In this chapter, the notion of trust is based on a dichotomous vision, which, however, offers a series of nuances between its ends: it is affective (based on benevolence, the desire to get closer, a positive feeling toward the other, even the identification with the other or the internalization of his values, without a priori, etc.) or cognitive (based on the knowledge held about the other, intelligence, reasoning, learning over time, etc.) [15, 23, 24].

Thus, conscious affective and cognitive foundations are involved in the decision to grant confidence (see following table **Table 1**). For example, a worker might find it easier to place his trust in another worker who has the same values as him, whom he has known for some time, who has ethnic or cultural characteristics closer to his own, who has a similar representation of work or family, or which he has heard very positively from several of his colleagues. Then, this same worker could, in theory, have more difficulty trusting a new worker whom he does not know and whom he has never seen, who was trained in a school other than his own, or who speaks another language. Whether voluntary or not, these foundations influence workers.

Then, trust is not one-sided. It concerns a relationship between two parties that have expectations, anticipations, reasons to trust and others, not to risk the bet. The two are responsible for building this relationship, which does not depend solely on

*Spoken and Unspoken between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous: Trust at the Heart… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101721*


### **Table 1.**

*The foundations of affective trust and cognitive trust.*

the worker who fits into an organization. Also, while emphasizing the importance of the trust that individuals place in representatives of an organization (organizational trust) or in institutions (institutional trust) [17, 32, 33], the reflection in this text bears on only on the trust of Indigenous workers in their colleagues (interindividual trust). All share the same space framed by standards specific to a given organization in each territory. In the context of this chapter, the reflection focuses on the trust that Indigenous workers have in their non-Indigenous colleagues in Quebec and non-Indigenous organizations.

In general, trust is approached and analyzed from the angle of a social relationship between indigenous and non-Indigenous workers, which has its source in a colonialist dynamic marked by power issues and underpinned by relationships with the other, to its history, its characteristics, its relation to the territory, etc., which influence the decision to trust. We believe—and our premise is—that the relationship between the two groups is unequal, that one group is more vulnerable than the other [11], and that relationships of mistrust can be created and reinforced because of these elements, even before the meeting between the workers.

Finally, our approach to trust is multidimensional and contextual. Our experience and our previous research on the question of trust lead to a broad understanding of it in an approach that touches on several dimensions (social, cultural, political, historical, etc.) and more specifically according to the contexts [34]. Thus, this chapter does not address trust as it occurs in almost homogeneous cultural environments (for example, a predominantly Quebec organization that welcomes very few Indigenous workers) or in multicultural environments. Rather, it does so in this very particular so-called bicultural (and bi-homogeneous) context, that is, a context in which two almost homogeneous and more or less numerous groups meet.

More specifically, this chapter discusses the determinants of social relations that influence the confidence of Indigenous workers in their colleagues in the specific context of the socio-professional integration of Indigenous workers in non-Indigenous organizations.

### **4.3 Determinants of trust**

*"The hope of a new relationship ( … ) in order to trust each other and to walk side by side" ([11], p. 420).*

In addition to the emotional and cognitive foundations, which serve as the basis for trust, in this text we mobilize relational and personal determinants of trust that come from previous research on the construction of trust between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in the education sector [17]. They seemed to us to be an interesting grid for the analysis of secondary data resulting from two studies<sup>2</sup> on the employment integration of Indigenous workers in non-Indigenous communities in the mining and energy sectors in Quebec. The common point of this research is the encounter between workers from two different cultures (Indigenous and Quebecois) who belong to the same geopolitical territory (Quebec).

The determinants of trust are those elements that indicate and delimit with precision what is to be implemented to encourage the construction of relationships of trust between workers and the human and social aspects, which govern their interactions in the context of work. They are presented in the following box (**Box 1**). It is from these determinants that we examine data emerging from another context: organizations in the mining and energy sectors.


**Box 1.**

*Relational and personal determinants of trust.*

<sup>2</sup> The results of the two studies are unpublished. They are presented in two research reports. The first postdoctoral fellowship (HEC) and private research (Niskamoon)

*Spoken and Unspoken between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous: Trust at the Heart… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101721*

### **5. Results: a review of the determinants of trust in the mining and energy sector context**

Considering data on the context of Indigenous and non-Indigenous workers in the mining and energy sectors, the determinants are organized a little differently. Rather than considering determinants depending on whether they are relational or personal in nature, they appear grouped into two "new" categories. We present them in this section.

### **5.1 Determinants prior to the social relationship that influence trust**

First, the repercussions of history and of colonialist heritage on work influence the level of trust Indigenous workers develop in their non-Indigenous colleagues. The colonialist heritage on which Quebec was built continues to shape, among other things, ways of thinking and structure relations between workers [12]. These relationships are tainted by the oppression experienced historically through various actions aimed at colonization, then cultural assimilation, which are still perpetuated today in different forms. Historical background also includes evangelization and forced schooling in boarding schools (as well as all the cultural, spiritual, social, or moral losses that they imply), which have disturbed several generations of Indigenous and still mark, notably in an intergenerational way, certain people. The consequences of these breaches of trust had "serious consequences well beyond the residential schools" ([11], p. 236). In the organization, feelings among Indigenous workers, which vary from a feeling of unease to a feeling of oppression, reverberate in different ways in their social relationships with non-Indigenous workers and influence their propensity to give their trust. Relationships are also marked by the mistrust that arose from the colonization process during which the Indigenous were imposed on institutions and systems of thought that were distant from their own systems (social, cultural, political, etc.). Organizational life, by requiring compliance with rules and norms, can recall this process and the imposition of a whole foreign social system on the Indigenous, which caused unforgettable prejudices, which still affect intercultural relations today [11, 12].

Workers may fear to experience this type of relationship again or in a different, more subtle, even unconscious form in the non-Indigenous worker who reproduces colonizing behaviors, often without knowing it. Then, it can be difficult for a Indigenous worker who has experienced the direct or indirect consequences of the colonialist heritage to fit into an environment where non-Indigenous are mostly the decision-makers of all decisions affecting his/her professional development in the organization. This is reflected even among Indigenous workers according to their personal trajectory: "People who come from reserves, they really have a longer way to go than those who come from Abitibi, that's day and night" (non-Indigenous worker). Another adds that these latter went to school with the whites. "That's it, they've been assimilated since they were very young" (non-Indigenous worker). In a work setting, a Indigenous worker might fear the imposition of a one-sided relationship. On the other hand, this situation leads Indigenous workers to confuse cultural assimilation with assimilation into an organizational culture and to a specific team and job dynamics. A change in behavior or attitudes may indeed be desired by a workplace (or its representative, the employer), and Indigenous workers who have less professional experiences in this type of organization or sector may have thought that the milieu wanted to "culturally" assimilate them. To this is added the fact that the company specializes in the production and processing of a single resource distributed to all consumers. This favored the construction of a traditional organizational culture based on the performance and productivity of its

workforce and without considering the contribution of other cultures in the organization of work and talent management.

The cultural stake of intergroup or interethnic meetings is another important determinant of social relations on which the trust of indigenous workers is based. Among other things, ignorance of the other (as much as the ignorance of the characteristics of Indigenous workers for non-Indigenous workers and vice versa) carries potential conflict that undermines trust. It brings its share of prejudices and stereotypes that undermine the building of trust. Then, it is also the source of a lack of adaptation of the environment to accommodate the Indigenous workers. Blind to the real characteristics, issues, and realities experienced by these workers, organizations find it difficult to intervene knowingly or in such a way as to recognize practices, representations of work, or important values in the eyes of Indigenous workers [10]. In general, non-Indigenous workers know little and are less interested in the culture and traditions of Indigenous communities [35]. Then, the lack of knowledge and respect for elements of indigenous cultures, in addition to their negative impact on confidence, is at the origin of the dissatisfaction of indigenous workers and can undermine the integration and retention efforts of the Indigenous workforce in non-Indigenous organizations [36–39].

The recent commissions of inquiry on the realities lived by Indigenous people report that the truncated public image of Indigenous people is also responsible for maintaining ignorance of them, including under-representation and the folkloric way of portraying them, in particular by conveying stereotypes [11–13]. In short, ignorance and lack of understanding of certain social and psychological repercussions of elements linked to the history of communities, particularly those concerning colonization, evangelization, and residential schools, affect trust [32, 40]. On the other hand, for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous workers, training helps to overcome these shortcomings and the lack of knowledge of others, which two workers express as follows:

*"I think it was good [the training]. He explained to us the whole reality of arriving in an environment where it's just white people and the difficulty of not being able to trust everyone" (non-Indigenous worker).*

*"I find that what is lacking in terms of training is to make a profile of whites to [Indigenous] ( … ). They make us the profile of the [Indigenous] before joining us, not personalized, but rather integral. But the reverse is not done, they do not explain to [Indigenous] what a White" (non-Indigenous worker).*

In the context of the data used for the drafting of this chapter, the circles surveyed are bicultural, which generates a particular dynamic where two groups tend to form and to mix less [17, 32]. Specific identities (linked to ethnocultural, linguistic, or spiritual affiliations) characterize them and the individual identification or belonging of workers to one or the other of the groups seems to be "taken for granted" to them. The self-registration of indigenous workers in a particular affiliation leads some of them to isolate themselves socially and without too much interaction with workers belonging to other spheres of affiliation. Moreover, a particular phenomenon of voluntary social isolation, a form of self-marginalization of indigenous workers (for example, indigenous workers who take their meals and do leisure activities only among themselves) becomes a way for them to protect their own cultural belonging and their sense of security in the face of difference [10]. A non-Indigenous worker also evokes the relevance of workers mixing and suggests that this rapprochement could encourage an Indigenous worker to confide in:

*Spoken and Unspoken between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous: Trust at the Heart… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101721*

*"By being together more often, [Indigenous and non-Indigenous workers] create a real dynamic, a real relationship [of trust]. ( … ) The goal is for integration to be facilitated. If the relationship is great between the men, maybe I as [Indigenous] could possibly confide in [a member of my team]" (non-Indigenous worker).*

Then, as the following worker puts it, the development of a relationship of trust in which the person can confide also depends on complicity, the demonstration of concern for the other, and discretion.

*"I consider [the confidence] to be fine today. [This Indigenous worker] confides in me very fat, that things are wrong with them and the small problems. I have a good bond with him. He trust me. He must know that I won't tell anyone. In individual meetings it remains between us. I do everything to help these people" (non-Indigenous manager).*

Thus, this mixture would promote exchanges and communication in general in the team, even within the organization. Then, it possibly allows for greater confidence and eventually makes it possible to achieve common organizational goals.

While the concept of individual identity plays a role in building trust, much like other emotional foundations, that of professional identity also plays a role. A Indigenous worker who identifies with his trade as an electrician and has a strong sense of professional competence, for example, would tend to trust another electrician more easily than he finds competent. The information he has about him (cognitive basis) could then be sufficient to take the risk of trusting him, bypassing the feeling of identity threat (personal and cultural).

Cultural differences have a particular impact on the emotional, then cognitive, foundations of workers. These include representations of work that differ, but also representations of the organization of work and teams. They go to the heart of workers' tasks. For example, an Indigenous worker reports a situation in which his Indigenous colleague lacked confidence in his boss. Since he does not share his (ethnic) culture, he fears that he will be less understood.

*"His boss mugs him in a corner or makes him empty trash cans, ( … ) he [my Indigenous colleague] was tired, ( … ). He didn't have the instinct to talk about it, he didn't trust the boss because he was white. He didn't want to talk to her about it because he didn't feel the boss was going to be there for him" (Indigenous worker).*

In the following example, a non-Indigenous worker talks about the emergence of cultural tensions related to everyone's adaptation to the other's culture. He clearly relates the difference between emotional foundations (I would trust you, because I appreciate you) and cognitive foundations (I would trust you, because I understand the way you work, and it corresponds to what I know). However, it is clear in his remarks that cultural adaptation to one another is important.

*"There are cultural tensions, meaning that everyone has different ways of working. It's not personal; I may like you well, but not like the way you operate according to your culture and without adapting to the other on the other side" (non-Indigenous worker).*

Other representations, such as those of family, divide workers when it comes to setting priorities that directly or indirectly affect work. For example, close family for the majority of Indigenous people is similar to what non-Indigenous people commonly refer to as extended family. Also, a Indigenous worker could arrive late, which would have an impact on the work to be done within his team, because he

wanted to help a member of his family whom he considers "close." However, in the conception of most of non-Indigenous workers, work might come before this extended family. A manager in the human resources department of a mining organization in Quebec told us about an exchange she had with an Indigenous worker who arrived late at the workplace:

*"I asked him why he was late. He explained to me that he had to help his aunt. After telling him that was not a valid reason, he replied, as if it was obvious: 'But she's my aunt! Would you have left her alone?'"*

In this example, the comparison of values in connection with representations of work and family is interesting to recognize. This manager was subsequently able to support this worker in his management of time and priorities. She taught him that he did not have to choose between his aunt and his job and that he could do both. However, taking the example from the perspective of the Indigenous worker, the manager's lack of understanding of her situation is a sufficient reason, at the outset, to hesitate to place her trust in her, since she does not have the same values or at least not the same order of priority of those values as it does.

The major direct consequence of cultural differences between workers is systemic discrimination and racism [11–13, 41–43]. For example, reports Caron [35], indifference and detachment from colleagues or superiors to Indigenous cultural identity can create stereotypes and systemic racism. The presence of racism in a work environment is one of the greatest obstacles to the integration of Indigenous workers and will have a relatively pronounced impact on their employment outcomes [10, 35, 37]. One concrete consequence relates to the difficulty for Indigenous workers to express themselves, which makes building social relationships more difficult: "One characteristic that we Indigenous people have is that we don't talk a lot. We are afraid of being judged" (Indigenous worker). Thus, for reasons of systemic discrimination and racism, Indigenous workers are reluctant to take this "social risk" of approaching each other and, possibly in their relationship, of trusting them.

Whether they are incidents or cultural prejudices that indigenous workers have themselves experienced [11–13] or that they have experienced by proxy (members of their family who would have suffered, for example), fear or sometimes anger or indifference makes professional experience in a non-Indigenous environment a considerable challenge, especially in relation to the establishment of relationships of trust. Then, to some extent, members of their nations may question the need to work outside of their community and for non-Indigenous employers. In this sense, these workers must be solid in a community context that may appear closed, impermeable, and complex about relations with the outside world [32] and in a national political context of very delicate relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous [12].

Then, cultural differences, racism, or discrimination brings cultural biases into relationships. For the next two non-Indigenous workers, one way to resolve or break free from these situations is to take this risk of trusting.

*"We all have cultural biases, but if both stick to their position and there is never one who takes the risk of trusting the other, it will stay that way for years to come, and in labor relations too" (non-Indigenous worker).*

*"Trust is a circle, who is the first to trust the other? There has to be one who does it" (non-Indigenous worker).*

*"Current" determinants of the social relationship that influence trust*

### *Spoken and Unspoken between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous: Trust at the Heart… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101721*

Different determinants of the social relationship between workers influence the confidence of Indigenous workers in their colleagues. First, the individual and collective adherence to a system of norms and rules demanded by the organization would have an impact. In the organizational context of meeting between Indigenous and non-Indigenous workers, it is not always easy to comply with certain standards and rules since many are implicit. Indigenous workers face the complexity of a social organization that they are less familiar with and that do not always correspond to this knowledge, practices, values, or beliefs. This situation has consequences for the establishment of a relationship of trust.

For example, for fear of being rejected for reasons of behavior or words, Indigenous workers are reluctant to act or speak out. The cultural insecurity they experience leads them to reduce social relations [44]. However, silence is not always a sign of mistrust. A Indigenous worker reports that individual characteristics such as the ability to express oneself also play a role and are not a sign of a lack of willingness to trust or fit into the community.

*"It's not because we don't have confidence that we don't speak, but sometimes also, it's not everyone who has the ability to express themselves, it's not everyone who is able to put words to what they think is not always easy, you know" (Indigenous worker).*

In addition, the difficulty, in some cases, in anticipating the behavior of their non-Indigenous colleagues marks the relationship: it remains difficult to place one's trust in a person whose behavior or reaction cannot be predicted. If cognitive confidence is based on this possibility of anticipating the behavior of the other, this difficulty has repercussions on the decision of a worker to take this social risk, since his knowledge of the other and of the system is irrelevant. On the contrary, the ability of the Indigenous worker to anticipate the behavior of the other favorably influences confidence.

Despite the existence of some training sessions on Indigenous cultures, a certain level of ignorance still exists among non-Indigenous workers. Added to the organizational culture and its exigencies in terms of standardized processes, it is difficult for Indigenous workers to be engaged and to fully contribute. This difficulty is partly explained by cultural and social differences in the functioning or exercise of management practices, but also in terms of individual interests and the organization of professional relations. It can also be the effect of divergent representations of work. Before getting to know these peculiarities better, Indigenous workers remain on "their guard." It takes time for them to understand the parameters of the system into which they are operating. In short, this phenomenon exacerbates the ability to bet on trust: from experience, unfamiliar territory may seem undermined.

Confidence in this case is given once the system is better known and the standards are accepted as specific to the organization and its culture and not related to the feeling of a demand for conformance to a culture in the sense of ethnicity and society (assimilation to organizational culture versus cultural assimilation). Indigenous workers, like all workers elsewhere, must be willing to conform to, and even assimilate into, an organizational culture. Thus, behaviors become easier to anticipate, predictable, even more consistent, and cognitive confidence easier to grant. Common cultural (organizational) benchmarks are thus built, and it becomes easier for the Indigenous worker to see the match between his interests and those of the other, then to create a zone of trust. However, indigenous workers sometimes interpret compliance with the system of standards and rules as exposure to some vulnerability, or even possible "subordination." This potential for vulnerability seems more difficult to accept, since it involves a risk for these workers.

Other determinants emerge from the analysis of social relations between indigenous and non-Indigenous workers. For example, repeated positive interactions improve communication, information sharing or the clarification of mutual expectations. Attitudinal and behavioral characteristics of workers (demonstration of intercultural skills, discretion, keeping promises, openness, ability to admit mistakes, etc.) also lead to trust more easily. For example, a Indigenous worker explains that the concern that members of her team had for her gave her confidence.

*"The moral side for example, the motivation, it was good. I was moving away from my family, I came here, but they took me under their wings, I felt confident with them and supported" (Indigenous worker).*

In short, level of trust among Indigenous workers relies on the nature of their social relations. The latter intervene by minimizing the risk inherent in trust. Also, the foundations of affective (common and shared values, identification with others, feeling of belonging, etc.) or cognitive (information about the other, representations of work, judgment, etc.) trust seem few and not frequent. For example, values seem uncommon and shared between Indigenous and non-Indigenous workers. Indigenous workers identify little with other workers, and a sense of belonging seems diffuse. In a more rational calculation, workers may consider that trust is too high a bet because the sources of mistrust are numerous and varied. That is because knowledge about the other is insufficient to be certain of their behavior toward them or because experiential events related to the story are negative or negatively interpreted.

### **5.2 Being trustworthy**

While Indigenous workers are trusted, non-Indigenous workers must also be trustworthy and play a role in building social relationships between Indigenous workers and themselves. This section reports what non-Indigenous workers suggest as ways to foster the confidence of Indigenous workers.

Being trustworthy presents characteristics very close to the need for cultural security of indigenous workers [44]. The culturally safe approach is to build trust with Indigenous workers. To do this, organizations will recognize the role of socioeconomic conditions, history, and politics in interpersonal relationships. Cultural safety also relies on understanding the power imbalance inherent in these relationships, the underlying discrimination, and the need to rectify inequities by making changes in the system [45]. "A safe work environment increases self-confidence as well as individual performance, well-being, and job satisfaction. It helps ensure better integration and retention of Indigenous workers in an organization, in addition to supporting their professional development" ([37], p. 63). For example, for a non-Indigenous manager, the need for cultural safety may be met when a competent mentor accompanies the Indigenous worker:

*"When you have a good coach with [the Indigenous worker], it becomes like your father and that person has a lot of confidence" (non-Indigenous manager).*

In addition, several organizations have begun to recognize the need to adapt their work environment, through the implementation of a practice of supporting Indigenous workers in changes in their relationship with work over and generations [10, 38].

### *Spoken and Unspoken between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous: Trust at the Heart… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101721*

The Truth and reconciliation of Canada (TRC) suggests certain practices or strategies to induce trust or minimize mistrust between Indigenous and non-Indigenous that are consistent with cultural safety and the type of environment being studied. Some of them apply very well to organization and intercultural relations between workers: opening the door to positive and productive communications, affirming pride in indigenous cultures, teaching, and creating cultural knowledge and appreciation or work with partners from Indigenous communities to help achieve their own goals.

All these practices are based on the recognition of indigenous specificity in all areas of life and on the reduction of cultural distance. This is made possible thanks, among other things, to the integration of strategic orientations within organizations. This integration shows a real openness and generates changes in operating methods, including ways of planning, and carrying out recruitment and training for indigenous workers.

Current adaptations in the organizations visited relate to cultural accommodations (for example, allowing time to participate in seasonal or traditional activities [8]), including models, elements, and Indigenous values in the workplace (for example, meals inspired by Indigenous cultures) or rapid intervention when discriminatory behaviors are identified.

The importance of supporting the heterogeneity of cultural identities within the work environment and collectivism [10, 35] is materialized by showing more flexibility, by revising policies for work–life balance so that they are coherent and that they adjust to the cultural and personal realities of Indigenous workers [38, 46]. Through training, non-Indigenous workers, including managers, improve their intercultural skills. For example, they become more aware that the behaviors they adopt may be reminiscent of discriminatory or colonizing behaviors. Thus, they increase the potential for sensitivity to the cultural reality of Indigenous people [43] and are better able to rectify inequities caused by systemic discrimination.

Workers report that to gain the confidence of Indigenous workers, it is necessary to trust them first and to give them the autonomy and the leeway that allow them to find their ways of working and to achieve their objectives:

*"You have to give them confidence. ( … ) It seems that we do not delegate enough the chance to make their own trail" (non-Indigenous manager).*

*"I'm trying to change my approach to give them a little more rope so that they can take the tools themselves and develop their technique. For example, this week, I took out all the inspection papers, I gave them: 'Here you guys are great, read this, you are starting to have experience, you are capable', I let them go with the leaves, and if there is anything, they come to see me" (non-Indigenous manager).*

In this sense, these workers will be able to develop their confidence because representatives of the organization believe in them. As such, a senior executive of a large organization that hosts a few hundred Indigenous workers noted that trust is based on listening to and showing concern for Indigenous workers and then recognizing their needs and facilitating their progression in the organization.

*"For the establishment of a relationship of trust, it is giving the feeling that you are heard, listened to by the hierarchical line, ( … ). At the [Indigenous] level, it takes listening and maybe it takes an adjustment of our expectations. Like anyone who*

*progresses in our business, we give mandates that they are able to carry out with a level of difficulty increasing over time according to the experience and the capacities and interests they have" (executive non-Indigenous superior).*

Finally, being trustworthy has several important dimensions that representatives of organizations must consider. They allow indigenous workers to place their trust in them, and it facilitates their integration into employment and their retention in these mining and energy sectors.

To conclude this section, examining the determinants that have been updated in the light of new research data leads to some interesting clarifications (see next box (**Box 2**)). They allow the organization to identify sources of confidence that will lead them toward the achievement of their objectives regarding the social and professional integration and the retention of indigenous workers, the subject of the next section.


### **Box 2.**

*Past and current determinants of confidence of indigenous workers in mining and energy sectors.*

*Spoken and Unspoken between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous: Trust at the Heart… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101721*

### **6. Analysis and interpretation: trust, social and professional integration and employment retention of indigenous workers**

The analysis of the determinants of confidence in the mining and energy sectors provides some observations about the social and professional integration and job retention of Indigenous workers. In this final section, we first present some thoughts that have emerged on the trust relationship between workers, and then we discuss the link between trust, inclusion, and retention.

First, let us come back to the concept of trust. In the light of the elements presented, it seems that "trusting" in this intercultural context means accepting a certain vulnerability in a power relationship that is often asymmetrical or perceived as such. Origgi [47] writes that trusting also involves giving others some power over yourself and accepting the inherent vulnerability. However, Indigenous workers already feel in a position of inferiority; trust, for them, may then consist of becoming even more vulnerable. Thus, the unequal relationship between indigenous and non-Indigenous workers partly supposes that the agreement of trust is perhaps a bet that they find more difficult to make.

The heavy weight of history and current postcolonialism still operates within organizations and undermines trust, then social and professional integration by marking relationships, sometimes even before their creation. It intervenes in the decision to grant or not trust and prevents the risk-taking associated with it. We wrote a few years ago [33] that time alone would allow generations to live better with the repercussions of colonialism, including racism and discrimination. However, recent discoveries in connection with the education of several generations of Indigenous children in residential schools have exacerbated what we thought was improving. Today, the lack of confidence of Indigenous people is directly linked to these repercussions. Also, the bet of trust for Indigenous is certainly riskier. Nonetheless, we can think that a positive story repeated over a long period and that cultural proximity will produce the opposite feeling in the long run.

We believe that if all relinquish power or if it is shared equally among all workers, trust will allow the creation of a stronger group whose cohesion will bring significant social capital that will facilitate not only trust, but social and professional integration and retention of indigenous workers.

In this sense, it may be necessary to "frame" the relationship of trust by determining and planning strategies and measures to this end to foster the confidence of the Indigenous worker. While taking into consideration that time is a guarantee for success and that results will only be possible after efforts have been made, strategies should focus on the importance of Indigenous culture in and for the organization. These actions involve collaboration with indigenous partners who can facilitate the presence of indigenous cultural landmarks and symbols within the organization.

As part of the identification of reciprocal expectations, a reflection must be initiated on intercultural social relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous workers. This reflection must question the place of Indigenous culture in intercultural relations and in relation to Quebec's organizations whose activities take place on ancestral indigenous territories.

Some findings show that the lack of common reflection, even though groups have started inserting Indigenous workers into employment, but that the main stakeholders, even if they are sometimes consulted, are no longer sufficiently involved in these processes. However, it seems important that Indigenous be part of the thinking of organizations that set up integration strategies, with more concrete and not just symbolic actions. Reconciliations are possible, and we feel that those in charge or

representatives, on both sides, are ready, supportive, and open to such discussions. In this, the organizations will gain social legitimacy among Indigenous.

An organization alone should focus on the strategies it can implement. However, these must take into consideration and distinguish between what is possible to do at its level and what is not within its purview. Also, there are different levels of trust (societal, organizational, within the team, inter-individual … ) that influence each other. Distinguishing them would allow organizations to better approach their efforts. For an organization, beyond strategies and their implementation, it is their real and genuine intention to include indigenous workers that makes a difference in their decision to give their trust or not.

Confidence seems to be a key of major importance that has the potential to minimize the issues related to the social and professional integration and retention of Indigenous workers in Quebec organizations. The reflections that begin this chapter allow to conclude that the thinning of the borders between groups and individuals rests on this risk to be taken in order to generate confidence and possibly leads to a facilitated social and professional integration and to a more great retention.

More concretely, organization that manages to get indigenous workers gives its trust and is willing to take some actions and implements certain strategies that can lead to the success of the workers' professional projects:


*Spoken and Unspoken between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous: Trust at the Heart… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101721*

• Support for indigenous workers, which includes a marked attention to the potential identity threat that the worker might feel and work with him on perceptions of cultural acculturation or assimilation on the part of the organization.

Finally, Indigenous confidence must be "systemic" and be embedded in several layers of society. It is an endemic and structural issue, and our thinking emerges in a context of relative instability where relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous in Quebec and more broadly in Canada are strained. Both organization and individuals do not have all the power to change things, but they have the responsibility to attempt actions and strategies at their level, to promote the establishment of a strong bond of trust between indigenous workers and the organization and its members.

### **7. Conclusion**

The purpose of this chapter was to update the determinants of social relations that influence trust between indigenous and non-Indigenous workers in the context of the mining and energy sectors. Also, the determinants of trust have been described as a strategy to act on issues of social and professional integration of indigenous workers in non-Indigenous organizations. In short, trust seems to be an avenue to be developed for the integration and retention of indigenous workers and, thus, for indigenous communities to improve current living conditions. The contribution of this chapter is therefore based on the place to be given to trust, which is presented as a key for the development of strategies for organizations that are willing to support their indigenous workers in their social and professional integration efforts. More generally, the reflection initiated in this chapter suggests that we must find ways to better reflect the identities and multiple needs of workers in a space shared by two groups.

### **Author details**

Emilie Deschênes<sup>1</sup> and Sebastien Arcand<sup>2</sup> \*


\*Address all correspondence to: sebastien.arcand@hec.ca

© 2022 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Section 4
