Managing trust and learning: an exploratory study

Trust and learning are topics that have attracted a great deal of recent attention. However, there is an important link between the two that has not been explored fully. In this paper, we seek to examine two key empirical questions: how does organisational trust influence learning? How can a firm's organisational context help improve trust and learning? The paper is based on a survey of 109 profit centre managers in a leading European multinational company. The paper seeks to explore the relationships between their organisational context, trust and learning within their profit centres. The findings of the study suggest that organisational context has an indirect influence on organisational trust, via the unit's operating performance. Stronger the performance, better the trust. Trust was also influenced by the procedural fairness within an organisational unit. Organisational trust in turn would appear to have a significant influence on organisational learning. Despite the small sample and other limitations of the study, the paper points to a useful way in which organisational trust and learning can be influenced. The administrative practices of an organisational unit, especially its resource support and procedural fairness, have an important influence on trust and learning.