Factors that facilitate trustworthiness of managers in the organisation

M.Comm.Global recession, competitiveness and technological growth have resulted in the transformation of work. Organisations continued to realign themselves and shed jobs in response to these changes, job security came under threat, and the employer employee trust gap continued to widen. Uncertainties occurred and these uncertainties occurred due to the transformation programmes that leaders of organisations have embarked on to adapt to the economic pressures from the external environment. The employees found themselves vulnerable as the processes unfolded, and the trustworthiness and credibility of managers was questioned by most employees. Organisations however do not have a common understanding of which factors facilitate trustworthiness of managers within the organisation, how the workplace understands trustworthiness, and the extent to which the trustworthiness of managers exists. The premise of this research was to determine the extent to which the facilitators of trustworthiness exist, and to explore what the employees in the work place regard as trustworthiness. The positive existence of the facilitators of trustworthiness that were determined indicated that the immediate subordinates of the managers in the organisation see their managers to be trustworthy. The workplace regarded openness and fulfilment of the promises as important factors that facilitate trustworthiness. In addition, the employees held similar understanding with regard to the theory of trustworthiness on the description of benevolence and personality characteristics. With regard to other factors that facilitate trustworthiness, i.e. openness, integrity, competency, and history of interactions, the gap was identified between the description of the theory and the workplace understanding of the facilitators of trustworthiness