Trust, Control and Post-Bureaucracy

Abstract

This paper is a contribution to the analysis of intra-organizational trust. From a discussion of concepts of trust, we suggest that trust is something which is constructed for and by people in organizations, thereby producing some degree of predictability. Trust is a precarious social accomplishment enacted through the interplay of social or discursive structures, including those of work organizations, and individuated subjects. We argue that bureaucratic organizations effected this construction in such an efficient manner that it `disappeared' as an issue for organizational theorists, but that shifting organizational forms have re-opened it. We suggest that the advent of corporate culturism in the 1980s offered one kind of reconfiguration of trust in organizations. However, subsequent extensions of organizational reform have undermined corporate culture as a way of constructing trust. These extensions, which, with some caveats, may be called post-bureaucratic, have brought with them new potential bases for trust, and hence control, in organizations. We explore these in two ways. First, we discuss how various types of managerial languages and techniques have the capacity to provide a global `script' through which particular local contexts can be made sense of, and which allow possible subject positions and identities to be secured. Second, we develop this discussion with reference to two different kinds of employees whose work is in some senses post-bureaucratic: accountants and consultants in Big Five firms, and temporary workers (temps) working through agencies to provide clerical and other services. In a conclusion, we comment on the durability of post-bureaucratic modes of trust

If You Can't Trust, Stick to Hierarchy: Structure and Trust as Contingency Factors in Threat Assessment Contexts

“…But hierarchies consist of relationships that are unequal in power or status, presenting an interesting arena in which to examine trust among organizational members (Kramer & Cook, 2004). While the hierarchy structure has been the typical bureaucratic structure (Grey & Garsten, 2001), the post-bureaucratic trend indicates that flexible, network organizations "capitalize upon fully connected, geographically disbursed, organizational participants by moving knowledge and power to the edges of organizations" (Leweling & Nissen, 2007, p. 1.…”

“…Preferable are steady, stable environments to achieve optimal coordination, but they lack agility due to the high formalization of rules and procedures (Grey & Garsten, 2001;Burns & Stalker, 1961). In situations of complex dynamics and decisions, hierarchy may limit performance.…”

“…Trust is as an important aspect of organizational design which functions as a general control mechanism (Bradach & Eccles, 1989) primarily because the emergence of less bureaucratic organizational forms has made trust a more central issue in organizational theory (Grey & Garsten, 2001). A shift in organizational design, toward a more flexible organizational structure and away from a traditional top-down hierarchical form results in higher quality and productivity (Banker, et al, 1996).…”

“…Absence of trust in these situations poses a risk and potential life and death consequences. In Grey and Garsten's (2001) view, trust acts as one mechanism to hold organizations together, particularly in more flat, flexible, networked organizational structures; that is, trust is necessary to enable organizing when organizations lack traditional hierarchical mechanisms. Indeed, trust may be a "more appropriate mechanism for controlling organizational life" than hierarchies or bureaucracies (Sydow, 1998, p. 31), and that without trust, "alternative organizational forms cannot be sustained" (Sheppard & Tuchinsky, 1996, p. 142).…”

Knowledge sharing behaviour – Impacts of trust climate and attachment to knowledge

“…Renzl (2008) proposes that trust can facilitate knowledge sharing by reducing the perceived loss of unique value by holding on to the power. This is measured as perceived loss of knowledge power (Grey, 2001). This sense of holding on to knowledge as a source of power and fearing to lose that power leads to knowledge attachment which could act detrimental to knowledge sharing.…”