| The discrediting of leaders and organizations has indelibly marked American business in recent months and the critical importance of trustworthiness in leaders and organizations has been a theme proclaimed loudly by Pope and President, employee and investor. This dissertation began prior to the debacle of Enron and Arthur Andersen, and its significance has taken on added stature as, during the time in which this dissertation was aborning, a host of other persons and organizations have been entered into the "Hall of Shame" of American business.; Organizational trustworthiness, and trust in general, have been poorly defined constructs that have been known more for the lack of consensus in definitions in the academic literature than for the insight offered by either practitioners or scholars. Building upon the preliminary theoretical work of Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman (1995), this dissertation presents and tests a model for organizational trustworthiness that incorporates eight factors that appear to have statistical and theoretical legitimacy.; The empirical focus of this dissertation is a study of perceptions of MBA students from St. John's University, Washington State University, and Drake University. These students were asked to identify the importance of items associated with organizational trustworthiness. Findings indicate that, for this group, 60% of the Variance Accounted For was captured by six factors---including a large factor that incorporated combined variables from three of the hypothesized factors. Statistically significant differences were also identified by gender, age, and race/country of origin.; This dissertation outlines a stream of future research to probe more deeply into the nature of trustworthiness and how it is achieved at the organizational level. Incorporated within this research plan is an extended study of the mediating lens by which trustworthiness is perceived, an investigation into the nature of trustworthiness as a behavioral and theoretical construct, and the relationship between trustworthiness and justice. As significantly, this research stream also reflects work that has already begun to identify how organizations can apply their understanding of the elements of organizational trustworthiness to identify how their employees perceive the level of trustworthiness within their own work environments. The practical application of the theory presented in this dissertation will ultimately be the best measure of its theoretical validity and usefulness. |
