Testing the job demands – resources model to explain organizational trust among private prison staff

Abstract

Two major forms of organizational trust are supervisor trust and management trust. Guided by the job demand-resources model, this exploratory study examined how the job demand variables of role conflict, role ambiguity, role overload, and fear of being victimized at work and the job resource variables of instrumental communication, job autonomy, job variety, and quality training were linked to both forms of organizational trust among staff at a private U.S. prison. Results showed that workplace variables predicted both types of trust and were generally stronger predictors than personal attributes. Moreover, resources played a greater role than job demands in shaping both supervisor and management trust. Among the demands, only role conflict was a significant negative predictor of supervisor trust and management trust. Instrumental communication, job autonomy, and job variety were significant positive predictors of supervisor trust. Job autonomy and job variety both had significant positive associations with management trust.

Keywords:

• Correctional staff
• job demands–resources model
• management trust
• organizational trust
• prison staff
• supervisor trust

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the reviewer and editor for their input and suggestions, and these points and suggestions improved the paper. The authors also thank Janet Lambert for proofreading this paper. Nancy Hogan and Eric Lambert equally contributed to the paper and are listed in alphabetical order.

Ethical standards

Declaration of conflicts of interest

Nancy L. Hogan declared no conflicts of interest

Eric G. Lambert declared no conflicts of interest

Jennifer L. Lanterman declared no conflicts of interest

Emily Berthelot declared no conflicts of interest

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee at Ferris State University and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed written consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.