The effect of HRM practices on impersonal organizational trust

Mika Vanhala and Riikka Ahteela

Management Research Review, 2011, vol. 34, issue 8, 869-888

Abstract: Purpose - Organizations face an increasing need to foster trust. However, there are fewer opportunities for developing interpersonal trust and an evident need to establish complementary forms. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of various human resource management (HRM) practices on the impersonal dimensions of organizational trust. Design/methodology/approach - The hypotheses are tested on a sample of 715 respondents from large corporations in the ICT and forest industries in Finland. Structural equation modelling was used. Findings - Employee trust in the whole organization is connected to perceptions of the fairness and functioning of HRM practices. Such practices can therefore be used in order to build the impersonal dimension of organizational trust. Research limitations/implications - Future studies should also include interpersonal dimensions of organizational trust. Another limitation is that datasets from different industries were merged: future studies should analyze data from the ICT and forest industries separately. Practical implications - HRM practices are used in all organizations, and could offer a practical solution to the problem of building and retaining trust without developing a special system or specific methods. Originality/value - This study contributes to the growing body of literature on the role of trust in the context of organizational relationships. To the best of the researchers' knowledge this is the first study focusing on the impersonal element of organizational trust and its relationship with HRM practices.

Keywords: Finland; Human resource management; Trust; Employee behaviour (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:mrrpps:v:34:y:2011:i:8:p:869-888

DOI: 10.1108/01409171111152493

Access Statistics for this article

Management Research Review is currently edited by Dr Jay Janney and Prof Lerong He

More articles in Management Research Review from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().