Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Processes and Politics of Trust at Work

本项目分析后工业工人如何在工作中实现和解释人际信任，以及这种信任如何在更广泛的劳动不安全背景下影响工人的工作感知。该项目将扩展两个学术领域的知识。对于信任的跨学科研究，该项目提供了一个概念框架，解决了不同研究中信任定义和测量的不一致性。该项目还通过调查信任如何在更传统的工作结构（如内部劳动力市场和工会）受到侵蚀的情况下组织工作场所关系，加强了劳动过程理论。通过强调信任不仅促进经济生产，还指导工作场所的意义和承诺，本项目的研究结果可以帮助雇主创造更具包容性和支持性的工作环境，以吸引、发展和利用全球人才。此外，工人权益倡导者和政策制定者可以利用该项目的研究结果教育工人了解信任的好处和责任，并制定制度支持和政策，帮助工人利用工作场所关系促进经济安全和流动性。对于研究文化、劳动和不平等的社会学家来说，职场信任是一个实证难题。在全国性的调查中，美国人在工作中表现出高度的人际信任，而在更普遍的情况下却表现出很少的信任。先前的研究表明，在当今这种短暂而灵活的工作、劳动力多样性和系统性员工监督的环境下，工作场所中的人际信任应该会受到侵蚀，但在当代美国的工作场所中，员工之间以及对经理的信任似乎依然存在。拟议的研究通过提出以下问题来调查这种明显的不协调：(1)信任是如何在由不同层次、监督和社会地位明显构成的当地工作环境中集体构成的；(2)信任过程如何影响工作场所参与者发展和理解工作关系以及评估工作情况的方式。通过12个月的参与者观察和80次对工人和管理人员的深度访谈，研究了两个不同类别的服务部门工作场所的这些过程。

This project analyzes how post-industrial workers accomplish and interpret interpersonal trust at work and how this trust influences workers' job perceptions within a broader context of labor insecurity. The project will expand knowledge in two scholarly fields. To the interdisciplinary scholarship on trust, the project offers a conceptual framework that addresses inconsistencies in the definition and measurement of trust across different studies. The project also enhances labor process theory by investigating how trust organizes workplace relationships at a time when more traditional work structures, such as internal labor markets and unions, are eroding. In highlighting how trust not only fosters economic production but also guides workplace meanings and commitments, the findings from this project can help employers to create more inclusive and supportive work environments that attract, develop and capitalize on global talent. In addition, worker advocates and policymakers can use the project's findings to educate workers about the benefits and liabilities of trust and to develop institutional supports and policies that help workers leverage workplace relations to promote economic security and mobility. Workplace trust presents an empirical puzzle for sociologists of culture, labor and inequality. In national surveys, Americans indicate high levels of interpersonal trust at work while reporting very little trust more generally. Prior research suggests interpersonal trust in the workplace should be eroding in today's climate of transient and flexible work, workforce diversity and systematic employee surveillance, yet workers' trust in one another and in managers seems to persist within contemporary American workplaces. The proposed research investigates this apparent incongruity by asking: (1) how trust is collectively constituted within local work contexts that are distinctly structured by varying levels of hierarchy, surveillance and social status and (2) how processes of trust influence the ways in which workplace actors develop and understand work relationships and assess work situations. These processes are studied in two class-differentiated, service sector worksites through 12 months of participant observations and 80 in-depth interviews with workers and managers.