Trust, Loyalty, and Culture in Organizations

The trend in business is based on the idea that an employee is the primary resource of any organization, that sincerity, benevolence, trust and loyalty of employees is a major competitive advantage. The purpose of the study was to examine relationship between different psychological organizational phenomena, such as trust, loyalty, and organizational culture in organizations with different spheres of activity. Hypotheses were tested using survey data different organizations: publishing, nanotechnology, banking, PR, marketing. The results of comparative and the correlation analysis of trust, loyalty and types of organizational culture have given evidence of all hypotheses. The results suggested that separate components of trust, loyalty and culture are related between each other. Organizational culture is related to organizational trust and employees’ loyalty, i.e. different types of culture require particular combination of trust and loyalty indicators. Organizational trust is related to employees’ loyalty, i.e. each component of organizational trust will be determined by the specific rate of each type of loyalty (organizational, professional, labor). Moreover differences of preferred and actual culture indexes are inversely related to overall level of trust and loyalty. The study carried out in a unique context of poor explored Russian market could provide further practical and theoretical insights and contributed to the understanding of the nature, development, and maintenance of trust, loyalty and culture in organizations. Yet, this understanding has not been fully translated to the business community in a way that encouraged the actions necessary to reduce the growing trust deficit. Senior leaders should re-double their efforts to build better practices for communication and employee involvement, along with strategies for reducing employee vulnerability and dependence. These efforts should be integrated into the cultural norms of the organization, where trust is a part of every interaction between employees.