The effects of transparency perceptions on trustworthiness perceptions and trust

ABSTRACT

Transparency is recognised as vital to ensuring employee trust in managers. However, prior measures of transparency have made it difficult to discern the precise influence of transparency on trust. We posit that separate dimensions of transparency perceptions (disclosure, clarity, and accuracy) uniquely influence perceptions of trustworthiness (ability, benevolence, and integrity). We also posit that trustworthiness, as the proximal predictor of trust, mediates the transparency-trust relationship. Using a recently published measure of transparency that captures its dimensions, we find support for our predictions that transparency differentially influences trust via trustworthiness across two samples with unique referents (direct manager and top-management-team). Our results show that employees place trust in different ways depending on how much information they perceive their managers to be sharing (i.e. disclosure), what they perceive their managers to be revealing (i.e. accuracy), and how they perceive their managers to be revealing it (i.e. clarity). Thus, managers who are seen as satisfying some dimensions of transparency but not others (e.g. disclosure and accuracy, but not clarity) might not foster needed trustworthiness perceptions for employees to justify placing trust in the manager, with practical implications for managers seeking to develop trust in situations that require them to demonstrate specific trustworthiness attributes.

KEYWORDS:

• Transparency
• trustworthiness
• trust

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge research funding from the Chambers College of Business & Economics at West Virginia University. An earlier version of this study was presented at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Chambers College of Business & Economics at West Virginia University.

Notes on contributors

Edward C. Tomlinson

Edward C. Tomlinson is a professor of management in the John Chambers College of Business & Economics at West Virginia University. His primary research interests include interpersonal trust, negotiation and conflict resolution processes, and workplace deviance.

Andrew Schnackenberg

Andrew Schnackenberg is an assistant professor of management at the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver. He received his PhD from Case Western Reserve University. He adopts a behavioral approach to strategic management research, focusing on how transparency is construed and conveyed in organizations and the symbolic actions organizations take to navigate stakeholder relationships.