Research into employee trust: epistemological foundations and paradigmatic boundaries

• Author: Graeme Martin,Sabina Siebert,Branko Bozic
• Date: 01 July 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12103
• Published date: 01 July 2016

Research into employee trust: epistemological

foundations and paradigmatic boundaries

Sabina Siebert, Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow

Graeme Martin,School of Social Sciences, Universityof Dundee

Branko Bozic, Adam Smith Business School,University of Glasgow

Human Resource Management Journal, Vol26, no 3, 2016, pages 269–284

This article explores the epistemological roots and paradigmatic boundaries of research into employee trust, a

growing field in human resource management. Drawing on Burrell and Morgan’s well-known sociological

paradigms and their epistemological foundations, we identify the dominant approaches to employee trust

research to examineits strengths and limitations. Our reviewof the literature on employee trustrevealed that

the majorityof the most cited papers werewritten from a psychologicalperspective, characterisedby positivistic

methodologies, variancetheory explanationsand quantitative data collection methods.We also found that most

of the studies can be located in the functionalist paradigm, and while accepting that functionalism and

psychological positivism have their merits, we argue that research in these traditions sometimes constrains

our understanding of employee trustin their organisations. We concludethat trust researchers would benefit

from a better understanding of the ontological, epistemological and axiological assumptions underlying of

HRM research and should embrace greater epistemic reflexivity.

Contact: Professor Sabina Siebert, Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow, Glasgow

G12 8QQ, UK. Email: sabina.siebert@glasgow.ac.uk

Keywords: industrial sociology; employee trust; intra-organisational trust; reflexivity; sociological

paradigms

INTRODUCTION

In this journal, John Godard (2014) argued that HRM and employment relations research

had become colonised by industrial and organisational psychology. According to Godard,

this ‘psychologisation’of HRM, could be explained by three factors. First, following a

decline in union membership and strike activity since the 1990s, the study of industrial/labour

relations and trade unions had become marginalised. Second, HRM was dominated by

psychological theory, increasingly focusing on organisational behaviour (OB) topics such as

motivation, leadership, change and group dynamics, but decreasingly on ‘messy’issues

requiring knowledge of economics, labour law, industrial relations or finance. Other researchers

have also noted this trend: for example, Barry and Wilkinson (2015) criticised the OB-dominated

approach to employee voice research because it is largely divorced from its institutional context

and heavily laden with value-free assumptions. Third, human resource management (HRM)

and employment relations research have become increasingly subjugated –ontologically and

methodologically –to a pure science paradigm. Accordingly, Godard summed up the

dysfunctional natureof these trends by claiming the ‘psychologisation’ofHRM was ineffective,

produced a negative impact on practice and sooner or later was destined to burn itself out.

With these criticisms in mind, we set out to explore Godard’s (2014) thesis of the

‘psychologisation’of HRM and employmentrelations research by focusing on employeetrust

in organisations,a prominent theme in currenthuman resources (HR) researchand practitioner

interest. To do so, we have drawn on Burrell and Morgan’s (1979) well-known framework of

different paradigms in social science research (1) to identify the epistemological roots and

HUMAN RESOURCEMANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL26, NO 3, 2016 269

©2016 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.

Pleasecite thisarticle in pressas: Siebert,S., Martin, G. and Bozic,B. (2016) ‘Researchinto employeetrust:epistemologicalfoundationsand paradigmatic

boundaries’.HumanResource ManagementJournal 26:3,269–284

doi: 10.1111/1748-8583.12103

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paradigm boundaries of employee trustresearch and (2) to throw new light on employee trust

research, by extending our earlier critique (Siebert et al., 2015) and offering some specific

recommendations for future HRM research in this field.

Our contributions to the HRM literature on employee trust are threefold. Firstly, we found

employee trust research was dominated by psychological perspective drawing on positivistic

epistemologies, using variance theory frameworks (Langley et al., 2013), and employing

experiments and surveys as methods of collecting data. Secondly, we found that Burrell and

Morgan’s classical analysis of ‘paradigms’in organisational research helped surface the

functionalist underpinnings of most employee trust research in our analysis. We contend that

this dominant functionalist perspective, heavily influenced by American industrial and

organisational psychology, and OB research, precludes deeper questioning of the relevance

of employee trust in lightof critiques of ‘soft’HR as a ‘failed project’(Thompson, 2011). While

recognising that positivist epistemology and functionalism have an important place in HRM

research (Pfeffer, 1993), we echo Isaeva et al.’s (2015) call for trust researchers to engage in

greater reflexivity. We argue that trust researchers would benefit from identifying the

ontological,epistemological and axiological foundationsof their research with a view to asking

different questions and employingdifferent approaches to studyingemployee trust. Thus, our

contribution lies not only in critique but also in offering alternative ways of conceptualising

employeetrust that step outside of the realm of functionalism. These alternatives are important

because they shed light on different interpretations of organisational trust by stakeholders

other than managers and offer a more complex reading of the theory and practice in this

increasingly important field.

We engage in this discussion of paradigm boundaries in employee trust research in full

knowledge of the various critiques of paradigm thinking in management research (Shepherd

and Challenger, 2013) and of Burrell and Morgan’s version in particular (Hassard et al.,

2013). However, we agree with Goles and Hirscheim (1999) who argued that Burrell and

Morgan’s workhas played an important rolein teasing out the scientism currently dominating

management research, especially in elite American management business schools and elite

journals (Khurana, 2007). Accordingly, we use their classification as a ‘sorting device’to

examine the epistemological roots and paradigm boundaries of employee trust research with

a view to pointing out its limitations.

Employee trust

Research into trust spans all social sciences (Kramer and Lewicki, 2010), mirrored by a wider

public interest in trust discourse. Bauman (2010: 30) commented on this phenomenon with

the following words: “That it is by trust that the economic, political and social orders stand,

and that it is by its absence that they fail has now become the doxa of political science.”So,

in such a context, it is not surprising that organisational trust has become an important part

of the research agenda in human resource management and employment relations (Mayer

et al., 1995;Tzafrir, 2005; Timming,2009, Appelbaum et al., 2013).Researchers have investigated

various aspects ofemployee trust in organisations (Kramer, 1999; Lewicki et al., 2006; Kramer

and Lewicki, 2010; Fulmer and Gelfand, 2012) identifying various sub-themes (Lyon et al.,

2015).

Researchersalso use different definitionsof trust; however, threedefinitions stand out for us

because they integrate different social science perspectiveson trust and are highly influential.

The first is by Mayer et al. (1995: 712), who defined trust as ‘the willingness of a party to be

vulnerable to the actions of another party basedon the expectation that the other will perform

Researchinto employee trust: epistemologicalfoundations and paradigmaticboundaries

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©2016 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.