Development of an instrument to measure organizational trust

The purpose of this study was to validate and further develop the Management Behavior Climate Assessment (MBCA) (Sashkin, 1996). This 50-item instrument assesses the climate of trust that exists in organizations as created by the actions and behaviors of senior- and executive-level managers. The study is based on two constructs: consistency and credibility. Specifically, a climate of trust exists in organizations when managers do what they say they are going to do, which is defined here as credibility, and behave in a predictable manner, which is defined here as consistency. The instrument was also tested to assess whether it measures trust as an individual- or organizational-level construct. Another purpose of this study was to assess the relationship between organizational trust and financial performance of the organization as perceived by the employees. This study assessed the extent to which the instrument is a reliable and valid measure of organizational trust by performing psychometric tests on data collected from seven sample groups (N = 601). The findings strongly indicate that the MBCA is a reliable instrument that measures trust as an organizational-level construct. The results of factor analytic processes show that the MBCA measures consistency and credibility as separate constructs. The findings support that a significant relationship exists between organizational trust and perceived financial performance. The outcome of the study provided information necessary to modify the instrument so that an improved measure of the climate of organizational trust can be attained.