by Wenbin Nah

Created on: March 17, 2008

The Role of Trust in Workplace Performance

In our ever-shrinking world today, competition too has globalized; organizations face competition not just locally but also internationally. In addition, there seems to be an intangible link between cooperation and performance within organizations. For this reason, organizations are looking for new ways to promote trust and cooperation within their people to edge ahead of their counterparts.

1. The Importance of Trust:

"Trust has a number of important benefits for organizations and their members" observed Kramer, a leading academic researcher. The idea that trust has numerous benefits for organizations has been, and continues to be, a major impetus for research regarding trust. But what is trust anyway? How do we contemplate the concept of trust?

2. What is Trust:

Trust is commonly viewed as an expression of confidence between the parties in a relationship that they will not be harmed by the actions of the other. There is a consensus that it is a complex multidimensional construct with differing views held by academics. The experience of trust is affected by interactions among people's values, attitudes, moods and emotions, and this has serious implications in the workplace.

3. Trust and Cooperation in Organizations:

Conditional and unconditional trust can exist within an organization. Even though both can lead to interpersonal cooperation and teamwork, the organization benefits enormously from unconditional trust as compared to conditional trust. The reason is that the presence of unconditional trust can facilitate the development of highly synergistic team relationships which consequently give rise to superior organizational performance.

Normally, conditional trust exists within an organization. However, if only conditional trust exists, individuals remain concerned about their own interests and this prevents full commitment towards organizational goals. Moreover, conditional trust can easily be duplicated by other companies by setting up a similar system of rules and incentives, providing no competitive advantage whatsoever.

Conditional trust is insufficient in situations where there are tasks that require high commitment yet without immediate and tangible benefits for individuals. In order to get employees to undertake these tasks, unconditional trust is desired. Unconditional trust is unique and cannot be replicated by other organizations. Such organizations enjoy a competitive advantage through the generation of tacit

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