Organisational trust behaviour in crisis management : development of a psychometric assessment

• Main Author: Mischo, Thomas I.
• Published: Birmingham City University 2012
• Subjects: 658.4
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.631673

This study investigates organisational trust in a crisis management context, focusing specifically on managerial behaviours and attitudes. Crisis managers and leaders are typically challenged with problem-solving in times of increased uncertainty, information deficiency, scarce resources, and pressure from various stakeholders—and yet, the expectation is often that the organisation not only survives, but that it emerges even stronger from the very crisis. Whilst the technical skills, knowledge, and experience that crisis managers and crisis leaders possess are a good foundation for effective crisis management, their specific behaviours and attitudes are at least equally, if not more, important. People’s trust-related behaviours and attitudes are likely to be affected by the economic and organisational context in which they operate. Therefore, the psychometric assessment of such behaviours and attitudes can be an essential step towards a fuller understanding of the role that trust can play in the organisation, and may augment management’s individual and collective crisis management capabilities. The proposed new psychometric instrument is the result of item- and factor analytical procedures on a pool of 168 items, newly written on the basis of survey data from three cohorts of experienced managers and leaders, categorised and condensed in several inter-rater agreement studies, and empirically tested with a sample of 377 US managers. Distinct clusters of managerial behaviours and attitudes emerged in exploratory factor analysis, and in confirmatory factor analysis a three-factor model performed best among several competing structural models. Together with high internal consistency of the full scale and each factor individually, the results provide strong support for the validity and reliability of the new construct organisational trust behaviour in crisis management. Content and face validity were demonstrated through the rigour of the development process, especially the highly significant inter-rater agreement coefficients from the assessment by 19 independent judges. Discriminant and convergent validity were supported by the results of correlational analysis and multiple linear regression with established measures of organisational trust and managerial skills. The substantive meaning of the three factors (individually and collectively) is based on item content, and supported by the extant literature. Further confirmatory analysis is recommended to enhance confidence in the stability of the factor solution, and to assess measurement invariance across different populations. Researchers are encouraged to explore the construct further, widen its nomological network, and help compile data for the establishment of appropriate norms beyond the development sample.