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

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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.