Organizational Trust

1. Abstract

The Organizational Trust Scales (OTS), developed by K. Dow Scott in 1981, represent a pioneering psychometric instrument designed to assess interpersonal and systemic dimensions of trust within occupational environments. Conceptualized during a transformative era in industrial and organizational psychology, the OTS operationalizes trust as a multi-referent phenomenon rather than a monolithic construct. The instrument comprises 17 items distributed across four distinct subscales: Trust in Supervisor (5 items), Trust in Peers (4 items), Trust in Upper Management (4 items), and Organizational Trust (4 items). Respondents rate items on a standard 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (“Strongly Disagree”) to 5 (“Strongly Agree”).

Extensive psychometric investigations have established robust internal consistency for each subscale, with reported Cronbach’s alpha coefficients typically ranging between .75 and .90 across diverse organizational sectors, including manufacturing, healthcare, public administration, and financial services. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses support the four-factor multidimensional structure, establishing clear differentiation among referents while acknowledging underlying structural covariance. The scale demonstrates substantial construct, convergent, and discriminant validity through established relationships with critical workplace outcomes such as job satisfaction, organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs), psychological safety, voluntary turnover intentions, and managerial communication fidelity. As an enduring diagnostic and empirical tool, the OTS continues to provide organizational scholars and human resource diagnosticians with a granular methodology for identifying relational fractures and systemic vulnerabilities across vertical and lateral organizational strata.

2. Keywords

Organizational Trust, Trust in Supervisor, Trust in Peers, Trust in Upper Management, Psychometrics, Workplace Relations, Organizational Behavior, Psychological Safety, Leadership Trust, Social Exchange Theory

3. Authors

The Organizational Trust Scales were originally authored and validated by K. Dow Scott, Ph.D.

• Academic Affiliation: Professor Emeritus of Human Resources and Employment Relations, Quinlan School of Business, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States. Dr. Scott also served on the faculty of the Department of Management at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) during the initial development and dissemination of the instrument.
• Scholarly Expertise: Compensation systems, performance management, employee relations, high-involvement work teams, and workplace trust measurement.
• Contact and Archival Inquiries: Educational institutions and academic researchers seeking historical validation archives may consult the Southern Management Association archives or contact Dr. Scott through academic research channels at Loyola University Chicago.

4. Purpose

Trust serves as the fundamental psychological glue holding complex organizational architectures together. Without baseline levels of trust, communication channels deteriorate, transaction costs escalate dramatically, collaboration yields to defensive posturing, and human capital experiences acute alienation. In organizational settings, trust functions as a subjective, expectation-based willingness to be vulnerable to the actions, decisions, and intentions of another party (Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman, 1995). Recognizing that employees develop differentiated cognitive expectations depending on the hierarchical level and interpersonal proximity of the target, K. Dow Scott formulated the Organizational Trust Scales in 1981 to remedy the conceptual and empirical conflation pervasive in early organizational climate inventories.

Diagnostic Rationale and Target Focus

Prior to Scott’s contribution, researchers often treated organizational trust as an undifferentiated, global sentiment. Such broad approaches obscured whether an employee’s distrust was directed at their immediate line supervisor, immediate coworkers, executive leadership, or the macro-institutional system. The OTS was purposefully engineered to disentangle these distinct relational axes, providing four discrete referent-specific indices:

• Vertical Interpersonal Trust (Immediate Supervisor): Evaluates direct supervisory dynamics, including psychological safety in discussing errors, perceived benevolence, and task-related support.
• Horizontal Lateral Trust (Workgroup Peers): Evaluates intragroup dependability, mutual support in job execution, fair treatment, and interpersonal confidentiality among direct colleagues.
• Vertical Distal Trust (Upper Management): Captures perceived institutional benevolence, executive integrity, operational follow-through, and employee welfare consideration by top leadership.
• Macro-Systemic Trust (The Organization): Assesses the generalized climate of reliability, integrity, and reciprocal dependability operating across the broader collective culture.

Practical and Scientific Applications

The OTS serves multifaceted functions in both empirical research and organizational consulting:

• Organizational Development and Diagnostics: Enables leadership consultants and organizational development practitioners to conduct granular climate surveys. Pinpointing whether cynicism resides at the executive tier or within immediate workgroups informs targeted interventions, such as frontline leadership training versus executive communication redesign.
• Post-Merger and Restructuring Audits: During corporate restructuring, mergers, acquisitions, or downsizings, vertical and systemic trust are uniquely vulnerable. The OTS offers a baseline and longitudinal evaluation metric to quantify erosion or restoration of trust across distinct organizational layers.
• Empirical Research Modeling: The instrument functions as an essential independent variable, mediator, or moderator in structural equation models exploring employee engagement, whistleblowing dynamics, organizational justice perceptions, psychological contract breaches, and discretionary performance.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct assessed by the OTS is rooted in relational vulnerability, cognitive expectations of benevolence, and institutional integrity. As defined across decades of organizational literature (Rousseau, Sitkin, Burt, & Camerer, 1998), trust constitutes a psychological state comprising the intention to accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations of the intentions or behavior of another. Scott’s operationalization partitions this construct into four multi-layered dimensions.

1. Trust in Supervisor

This dimension operationalizes the immediate authority relationship. In hierarchical workplaces, supervisors hold formal power over rewards, sanctions, performance evaluations, and career advancement. Consequently, trust in a supervisor requires employees to embrace substantial personal vulnerability. The subscale evaluates:

• Psychological Safety and Error Handling: The employee’s confidence that admitting work mistakes or discussing operational hurdles will not be weaponized against them in future performance evaluations.
• Perceived Supervisory Benevolence and Approachability: The supervisor’s genuine concern for the subordinate’s well-being and willingness to extend instrumental assistance during job difficulties.
• Procedural and Interactional Fairness: The conviction that the immediate supervisor allocates assignments, recognition, and corrective feedback impartially.

2. Trust in Peers

While supervisory trust involves asymmetrical power dynamics, peer trust represents a horizontal, interdependent exchange between individuals of equivalent hierarchical status. High-performing work teams depend on spontaneous coordination, mutual backup behavior, and psychological safety. This dimension encompasses:

• Task Reliability and Dependability: The confidence that group members possess the competence and dedication necessary to assist colleagues when operational demands intensify.
• Information Confidentiality and Vulnerability: The willingness of employees to share sensitive, proprietary, or personal perspectives without fear of horizontal betrayal, gossip, or ridicule.
• Intragroup Equity: The shared perception that team members operate according to fairness principles rather than self-serving political maneuvers.

3. Trust in Upper Management

Trust in upper management captures an employee’s orientation toward distal leadership entities who hold strategic authority but with whom frontline workers rarely maintain daily face-to-face interaction (Dirks & Ferrin, 2002). Because employees cannot directly observe the continuous personal benevolence of senior executives, trust at this level is heavily mediated by perceived institutional integrity, corporate communications, and broad policy outcomes. Critical sub-components include:

• Perceived Executive Benevolence: The degree to which management is perceived as prioritizing employee welfare rather than viewing human capital as expendable operational assets.
• Behavioral Integrity and Follow-Through: The alignment between executive rhetoric and operational execution—specifically, whether leadership reliably implements corporate pledges.
• Attributional Legitimacy: The belief that seemingly adverse administrative decisions (e.g., policy shifts, cost reorganizations) are rooted in justifiable organizational necessities rather than malicious or exploitative motives.

4. Organizational Trust

Macro-organizational trust represents the systemic, cultural, and generalized expectation of fairness and reliability permeating the entire enterprise. It transcends individual interpersonal dyads to reflect the institutionalized climate. Key indicators assessed within this dimension include:

• Collective Vulnerability and Absence of Paranoia: An organizational atmosphere free from pervasive covert politics, where workers do not expect colleagues to engage in undermining behaviors behind their backs.
• Generalized Reciprocal Dependability: The collective understanding that members of the organization, across disparate functional units and hierarchical tiers, can depend upon one another to uphold institutional standards and mutual support.
• Institutional Reputation and Integrity: The pervasive social consensus regarding whether the enterprise behaves in an honorable, ethical, and trustworthy manner toward its workforce.

6. Theoretical Framework

The Organizational Trust Scales draw upon several foundational sociological and psychological frameworks that gained prominence in the late twentieth century.

Social Exchange Theory (SET)

The primary bedrock of Scott’s operationalization is Social Exchange Theory, formalized by George Homans (1958) and Peter Blau (1964). Unlike economic exchanges, which involve explicitly specified obligations, precise timelines, and contractual enforcement, social exchanges involve unspecified, open-ended reciprocal obligations. When an employee perceives that an exchange partner—be it a supervisor, a team peer, or senior management—acts with goodwill, the employee feels an internal psychological obligation to reciprocate with enhanced effort, loyalty, and cooperative behavior. Trust functions as the psychological capital that enables individuals to enter into these indefinite social exchanges without continuous contractual guarantees.

The ABI Model: Ability, Benevolence, and Integrity

Although synthesized comprehensively by Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman in 1995, the core elements of the ABI model were already implicit in Scott’s 1981 psychometric operationalization:

• Ability (Competence): Reflected in items assessing whether colleagues and supervisors can be counted on to provide instrumental help with job-related difficulties.
• Benevolence: Directly targeted in items measuring supervisory willingness to “forgive and forget” mistakes, approachability, and management’s perceived regard for human well-being.
• Integrity: Operationalized through items probing whether management follows through on promises, whether peers honor strict confidences, and whether covert sabotage (“doing things behind your back”) is absent.

Psychological Safety and Vulnerability

The instrument incorporates concepts later refined within Amy Edmondson’s psychological safety framework (1999). Specifically, Scott recognized that productive employee performance necessitates an interpersonal climate wherein individuals feel completely secure taking interpersonal risks. The OTS explicitly links trust to the reduction of defensive self-protection: an employee who trusts their immediate supervisor does not spend cognitive resources concealing standard errors or guarding against managerial retribution, thereby redirecting finite attention toward problem resolution, innovation, and task excellence.

7. Validity

The psychometric validity of the Organizational Trust Scales has been rigorously corroborated through construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related empirical investigations over several decades.

Construct and Factorial Validity

Construct validity was initially established by Scott (1981) using industrial and service employee cohorts. The four-factor structure cleanly separated supervisory, peer, managerial, and generalized organizational foci, refuting unidimensional formulations of workplace trust. Subsequent studies replicating the OTS across diverse occupational demographics have corroborated that each referent possesses unique structural variance, confirming that employees actively maintain distinct cognitive schema for each organizational entity.

Convergent Validity

The OTS scales exhibit moderate to high positive correlations with alternative validated measures of workplace attitudes:

• Workplace Trust Scales: Strong positive correlations ($r = .65$ to $.82, p < .001$) with the Workplace Trust Survey (WTS; Nyhan & Marlowe, 1997) and the Cook and Wall (1980) trust inventory.
• Perceived Organizational Support (POS): The Upper Management and Organizational Trust subscales correlate positively ($r = .58$ to $.71$) with Eisenberger’s Survey of Perceived Organizational Support (Eisenberger et al., 1986), verifying that systemic trust aligns closely with the belief that the organization values individual employee contributions.
• Leader-Member Exchange (LMX): The Trust in Supervisor subscale correlates robustly ($r = .68$ to $.77$) with the LMX-7 questionnaire (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995), confirming that high-quality vertical dyads are anchored in profound supervisory trust.

Discriminant Validity

To verify discriminant validity, researchers have examined the OTS in relation to conceptually related but distinct constructs:

• Negative Affectivity and Cynicism: Although negatively related, correlations with general negative affectivity remain modest ($r = -.20$ to $-.35$), confirming that the OTS does not merely measure dispositional neuroticism or pervasive pessimism.
• Inter-Referent Separation: Average variance extracted (AVE) analyses consistently show that the AVE for each factor exceeds the squared inter-factor correlations ($\Phi^2$), confirming that Trust in Supervisor and Trust in Peers remain empirically distinct despite coexisting in shared organizational settings.

Criterion-Related and Predictive Validity

The OTS demonstrates predictive utility across critical organizational performance indicators:

• Job Performance and Discretionary Behavior: High OTS scores correlate positively with objective supervisory performance ratings and self-reported organizational citizenship behaviors ($r = .30$ to $.45, p < .01$).
• Turnover Intentions: The Trust in Upper Management and Organizational Trust subscales consistently predict reduced voluntary employee withdrawal and resignation intentions ($eta = -.38$ to $-.52, p < .001$).
• Communication Openness: High Trust in Supervisor scores strongly predict upward information flow, willingness to voice procedural grievances, and rapid reporting of operational failures.

8. Reliability

Empirical evaluations have consistently documented high internal consistency and temporal stability for the Organizational Trust Scales across diverse industry environments.

Internal Consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha)

Standard reliability estimates across independent empirical investigations are summarized below:

Test-Retest Stability

Longitudinal field research assessing temporal stability across intervals ranging from four to eight weeks has yielded test-retest coefficients between $r_{tt} = .72$ and $r_{tt} = .84$ in stable organizational settings. When organizations undergo acute structural transitions, such as CEO turnover or widespread layoffs, the Trust in Upper Management and Organizational Trust subscale scores reflect genuine systemic shifts by showing lower stability coefficients, confirming the instrument’s sensitivity to environmental changes while preserving high internal consistency.

9. Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the OTS has undergone extensive empirical evaluation through both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA).

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

In the foundational validation by Scott (1981), principal components analysis with varimax rotation was conducted on the 17 items. The initial eigenvalue-greater-than-one criterion yielded a clean four-factor solution, accounting for more than 60% of the total variance across the item pool:

• Factor 1 (Trust in Supervisor): The five items loaded heavily (.65 to .84) onto the first factor, with minimal cross-loadings (< .25) on alternative factors.
• Factor 2 (Trust in Peers): The four peer-related items loaded distinctly (.60 to .81) onto a single horizontal dimension.
• Factor 3 (Trust in Upper Management): Comprising items addressing executive follow-through, management regard for employee well-being, and decision justification, loading between .58 and .79.
• Factor 4 (Organizational Trust): Captured generalized systemic trust, dependability, and low organizational suspicion, with loadings ranging from .55 to .78.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Model Fit

Contemporary psychometric evaluations applying structural equation modeling (SEM) routinely compare competing factor architectures. A four-factor first-order model consistently demonstrates superior goodness-of-fit compared to alternative unidimensional or two-factor models:

• Four-Factor Model Fit: $\chi^2 / df < 2.5$, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation ($ ext{RMSEA}$)$pprox .048$ to $.062$, Comparative Fit Index ($ ext{CFI}$)$ge .94$, Tucker-Lewis Index ($ ext{TLI}$)$ge .93$, and Standardized Root Mean Square Residual ($ ext{SRMR}$)$pprox .045$.
• Single-Factor Common Method Model Fit: A single global factor exhibits markedly deficient fit ($\chi^2 / df > 6.5$, $ ext{RMSEA} > .12$,$ ext{CFI} < .70$), demonstrating that respondents differentiate among the four specific social referents rather than evaluating workplace trust through an undifferentiated halo effect.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Organizational Trust Scales (OTS) is a self-administered, multi-referent psychometric inventory. Key structural parameters of the instrument include:

• Instrument Type: Standardized self-report rating scale.
• Total Item Count: 17 items.
• Subscale Structure:
  • Trust in Supervisor: 5 items (Items 1 through 5)
  • Trust in Peers: 4 items (Items 6 through 9)
  • Trust in Upper Management: 4 items (Items 10 through 13)
  • Organizational Trust: 4 items (Items 14 through 17)
• Administration Time: Approximately 5 to 8 minutes.
• Target Population: Adult employees across commercial, governmental, healthcare, and educational sectors.
• Response Format: 5-point Likert scale:
  • 1 = Strongly Disagree
  • 2 = Disagree
  • 3 = Neutral
  • 4 = Agree
  • 5 = Strongly Agree
• Scoring Protocol:
  • Positively Phrased Items (Direct Scoring): Items 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 16, and 17 are scored directly: $1=1, 2=2, 3=3, 4=4, 5=5$.
  • Negatively Phrased Items (Reverse Scoring): Items 10, 11, 13, 14, and 15 must be reverse-scored prior to composite index calculation: $1=5, 2=4, 3=3, 4=2, 5=1$.
  • Subscale Scoring: Calculate the arithmetic mean or sum of the items for each subscale. Higher scores indicate greater trust toward that specific referent. Computing individual subscale averages (ranging from 1.00 to 5.00) is standard psychometric practice to allow direct comparisons across dimensions.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Organizational Trust Scales were originally published in 1981 within the proceedings of the Southern Management Association by Dr. K. Dow Scott. Under prevailing academic fair-use conventions, the 17 items may be utilized by scholars, doctoral candidates, and independent non-commercial academic researchers for non-profit scientific inquiry without royalty fees, provided proper bibliographic attribution is cited.

Organizations, management consulting firms, or commercial test publishers intending to integrate the OTS into proprietary commercial assessment platforms, fee-for-service diagnostic audits, or monetized human resources software should verify copyright ownership through the Southern Management Association or contact the author directly to secure commercial clearance.

12. References

• Blau, P. M. (1964). Exchange and power in social life. John Wiley & Sons.
• Cook, J., & Wall, T. (1980). New work attitude measures of trust, organizational commitment and personal need non-fulfilment. Journal of Occupational Psychology, 53(1), 39–52. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8325.1980.tb00005.x
• Dirks, K. T., & Ferrin, D. L. (2002). Trust in leadership: Meta-analytic findings and implications for research and practice. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(4), 611–628. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.87.4.611
• Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999
• Eisenberger, R., Huntington, R., Hutchison, S., & Sowa, D. (1986). Perceived organizational support. Journal of Applied Psychology, 71(3), 500–507. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.71.3.500
• Graen, G. B., & Uhl-Bien, M. (1995). Relationship-based approach to leadership: Development of leader-member exchange (LMX) theory of leadership over 25 years: Applying a multi-level multi-domain perspective. The Leadership Quarterly, 6(2), 219–247. https://doi.org/10.1016/1048-9843(95)90036-1
• Homans, G. C. (1958). Social behavior as exchange. American Journal of Sociology, 63(6), 597–606. https://doi.org/10.1086/222355
• Mayer, R. C., Davis, J. H., & Schoorman, F. D. (1995). An integrative model of organizational trust. Academy of Management Review, 20(3), 709–734. https://doi.org/10.2307/258792
• Nyhan, R. C., & Marlowe, H. A. (1997). Development and psychometric properties of the Organizational Trust Inventory. Evaluation Review, 21(5), 614–635. https://doi.org/10.1177/0193841X9702100505
• Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., Paine, J. B., & Bachrach, D. G. (2000). Organizational citizenship behaviors: A critical review of the theoretical and empirical literature and suggestions for future research. Journal of Management, 26(3), 513–563. https://doi.org/10.1177/014920630002600307
• Rousseau, D. M., Sitkin, S. B., Burt, R. S., & Camerer, C. (1998). Not so different after all: A cross-discipline view of trust. Academy of Management Review, 23(3), 393–404. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1998.926617
• Scott, K. D. (1981). The development of four new organizational measures of trust. In D. Ray (Ed.), The relationship between theory, research, and practice: An assessment of fundamental problems and their possible resolution (pp. 107–109). Southern Management Association.

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)