Exploring the effects of agent trust and benevolence in a simulated organizational task

Executives argue intuitively that trust is critical to effective organizational performance. Although articulated as a cognitive/ affective property ofindividuals, the collective effect of events influencing(and being influenced by) trust judgments must certainly impact organizational behavior. To begin to explore this, we conducted a simulation study of trust and organizational performance. Specifically, we defined a set ofcomputational agents, each with a trust function capable of evaluating the quality ofadvice from the other agents, and rendering judgments on the trustworthiness of the communicating agent. As agent judgments impact subsequent choices to accept or to generate communications, organizational performance is influenced. We manipulated two agent properties(trustworthiness, benevolence), two organizational variables (group size, group homogeneity/liar-to-honest ratio), and one environmental variable (stable, unstable). Results indicate that in homogeneous groups, honest groups did better than groups of liars, but under environmental instability, benevolent groups did worse. Under all conditions for heterogeneous groups, it only took one to three liars to degrade organizational performance.