Organizational trust: How to include the division of labour?

Sven Svensson
Additional contact information
Sven Svensson: Mid Sweden University, Sweden; University of Gävle, Sweden

Economic and Industrial Democracy, 2018, vol. 39, issue 2, 272-293

Abstract: The aim of this article is to study the relevance of the division of labour to the formation of organizational trust. Trust is defined as a phenomenon related to the resources available to a person in a given social position, a social position which in turn is related to the division of labour. It is argued that work externalization constitutes a division of labour, and that differing access to resources for internal and external workers explains variations in trust. The theoretical propositions are tested in a quantitative analysis of 711 external workers and internal employees in a Swedish organization. The results lend partial support to the theory. External employees are found to be less likely have strong trust in their co-workers. The relationship is mediated by perceptions of shared norms in the organization.

Keywords: Division of labour; management; organizational trust; sociology; temporary agency work; work externalization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0143831X15611965 (text/html)

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:sae:ecoind:v:39:y:2018:i:2:p:272-293

DOI: 10.1177/0143831X15611965

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economic and Industrial Democracy from Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().