The association between different forms of organizational trust and correctional staff job stress

ABSTRACT

Trust is crucial to the proper functioning of organizations. Trust has been examined at many levels, and researchers have recently expanded the study of trust to include areas ranging from the neuroscience of trust to the influence of institutional trust on product sales and marketing. While academic interest in trust has grown, research on trust and job stress among correctional employees is rare. The current study evaluated the relationships between three types of trust (coworker, supervisor, and management trust) and correctional staff job stress. Using staff survey data from a Southern prison, two multivariate OLS regression equations were estimated – one for all surveyed staff and a second for the subgroup of correctional officers – in order to determine how the three types of organizational trust related to job stress. Results indicated that trust in coworkers mattered for correctional officers only and that trust in supervisors and management had a greater influence on job stress both for all correctional staff and for the subgroup of correctional officers. Specifically, those with higher levels of supervisor and management trust reported lower levels of job stress.

KEYWORDS:

• Correctional staff
• job Stress
• coworker trust
• supervisor trust
• management trust

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stacy H. Haynes

Stacy H. Haynes is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Mississippi State University. Her research focuses on issues related to corrections, sentencing, victimization, and criminal justice policy. Her work has appeared in numerous outlets, including Crime & Delinquency, Criminal Justice Review, Criminology & Public Policy, and Violence & Victims.

Matthew C. Leone

Matthew C. Leone is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he also serves as Director of Graduate Students. He was the Associate and Interim Director of the Grant Sawyer Center for Justice Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno for seven years. He is a graduate of the Psychology program at San Diego State University, and he received his MA and PhD from the University of California, Irvine. His areas of interest include corrections, community-based corrections, and juvenile justice. He is the author/editor of three books and numerous book chapters, research articles, and governmental reports.

Linda D. Keena

Linda D. Keena is an Associate Professor of Legal Studies and the Law Studies Program Coordinator at the University of Mississippi. She is a former Missouri adult probation and parole officer. For the last few decades, she has taught various criminal justice courses and facilitated faith-based, victim-centered, and entrepreneurship programs to maximum-security inmates, both nationally and internationally. She has a record of scholarly publications that reflect a variety of restorative justice, institutional and community corrections, and servant leadership topics. Keena is a 2014 graduate of Harvard School of Executive Education. In addition, she is a member of the American Corrections Association’s Professional Education Council, Victim and Restorative Justice Committee and a Delegate Assembly member, representing Institutions of Higher Learning. Dr. Keena is a life member of the National Association of Community and Restorative Justice and currently serves as the ACJS Restorative and Community Justice Section 2^nd Executive Counselor and Dialogue Newsletter Editor.

David C. May

David C. May is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at Mississippi State University. He has authored or coauthored six books and dozens of scholarly articles and book chapters around his research interests of fear of crime, school safety, corrections, military sociology, cybercrime, and human robot interaction.

Rosemary Ricciardelli

Rosemary Ricciardelli, elected to the Royal Society of Canada, is a Professor of Sociology at Memorial University. Her research is centered on evolving understandings of gender, vulnerabilities, risk, and experiences and issues within different facets of the criminal justice system. Beyond her work on the realities of penal living and community re-entry for federally incarcerated persons in Canada, her current work focuses on the experiences of correctional staff given the potential for compromised psychological, physical, and social health inherent to the occupations.

Eric G. Lambert

Eric G. Lambert is a faculty member in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Nevada, Reno. He received his Ph.D. from the School of Criminal Justice at the State University of New York at Albany. His research interests include organizational issues, job and organizational effects on the attitudes, intentions, and behaviors of criminal justice employees, and the international perceptions, attitudes, and views on criminal justice issues.