Managing Trust in High Reliability Organisations: A study based on the Swiss Aviation Maintenance Industry Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirement of the degree of Master of Business Administration of the University of Strathclyde

Andreas Fischbacher Completion 2012, MacTaggart Supervisor Dr. Calvin Burns

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Statement of Academic Honesty

I declare that this dissertation is entirely my own original

work.

I declare that except where fully referenced direct quotations

have been included, no aspect of this dissertation has been copied

from any other source.

I declare that all other works cited in this dissertation have been

appropriately referenced.

I understand that any act of Academic Dishonesty such as

plagiarism or collusion may result in the non-award of a Masters

degree.

Signed …………………….……… Dated …….……………………

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Most sincere thanks to my project supervisor, Dr. Calvin Burns, who promptly

responded to my enquiries, ready to support this project at short notice with very

valuable insights and a remarkable amount of input. I could not have chosen a more

competent guidance.

Thank you to everyone who has supported this project through giving interviews for

their valuable contribution, I could not have done without you. I am also very thankful

for all supporters of this study for taking their time, advising, listening, reading, or filling

a questionnaire.

My greatest thanks to my parents who taught me, early on, what trust and confidence

really mean and for their ongoing support of my personal development.

Greatest thank you also to my wife Anastassia, who almost didn’t know anymore who

she was married to and supporting after three years of studying in an environment of

constant change and uncertainty.

Luzern, 18th of March 2012

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ABSTRACT Motivated by strong interest and personal experience with trust in safety critical

organisations a study on the manageability of this phenomenon has been conducted in

the author’s professional area, aviation.

The pivotal role of trust in contributing to safety is well described in academic and

empirical research, therefore special interest has been directed on the question how

can this contributor, trust, be managed, or engineered to contribute to safety

performance within High Reliability Organisations (HROs), defined by exposure to high

risks with high losses at stake.

The research approach consisted of interviewing three safety managers and a

questionnaire survey on a small population of three companies in the Swiss German

aircraft maintenance industry.

It was empirically confirmed that the formation and improvement of trust can be

enhanced indirectly by supporting certain antecedents of trust. The findings also

suggest that directly managing or engineering trust is not possible, as trust is of a

multifaceted nature that is built upon affective and cognitive antecedents.

The parallel existence of trust and mistrust have triggered the question about

confidence and criticism, which are perceived in literature as opposite or related

aspects. Despite the notion that trust and confidence do not exist simultaneously, all

other concepts are seen as potentially coexistent within HROs.

The existing model of Conchie and Donald on safety specific functional/dysfunctional

forms of trust has been developed further and now includes an enhanced view on

affective and cognitive antecedents of trust or confidence. It was also found that

clarification is needed about the biases of intention, action, relational aspects and

judgements about the past/ presence orientation of trust and confidence motivation.

As this study was carried out within a fast changing environment and based on a very

small sample from a closely defined population additional research would add greater

reliability to the findings.

The value of this paper lies in finalizing eight actionable recommendations to managers

in aviation maintenance including the need for a clear differentiation between trust and

confidence, role model awareness, governance, leadership, transparency, and

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fairness. These recommendations derived from empirical study may also be valuable to

other industries and operations whereas the need to clarify the transferability of

findings and data between different kinds and geographies of HROs through further

studies has been identified. Additional research areas would include clarification on

peer-to-peer relations in safety reporting, and the correlation of game theory and trust

in individual deliberation processes.

The word count of this dissertation from chapter 1 including chapter 7 as analysed by Microsoft WORD® is 15806

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 3  

ABSTRACT 4  

LIST OF ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS 8  

INDEX OF DISPLAYS AND TABLES 9  

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 10  

1.1   Background 10  1.2   The Dilemma of Quality Management and Trust 10  1.3   Human Factors Training - did it build trust? 11  1.4   Safety Management introduced 11  1.5.   Research Question 13  1.6.   Research Context 13  1.7.   Aims 13  1.8.   Project outline 14  

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 15  

2.1   Preamble 15  2.2   Safety Management in Brief 16  2.3   Definitions and Concepts of Trust 18  2.4.   Aspects and Elements of Trust 19  2.5   Trust within organisations 20  2.6   Trust, Risk and Safety in Organisations 23  2.7   The ‘Dark’ Side of Trust 25  2.8   Summary 27  

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH 28  

3.1   Introduction 28  3.2   Interviews 29  3.3   Questionnaire Survey 33  

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS 35  

4.1.   Interview Results 35  4.2.   Developing the questionnaire 38  4.3   Survey Results 42  

CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION 44  

5.1   How do the findings of this study relate to present research? 44  5.2   Rethinking existing concepts 46  5.3   Questions for Further Research 49  5.4   Limitations of the current research 50  

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CHAPTER 6: RECOMMENDATIONS & CONCLUSION 52  

6.1   Recommendations 52  6.2   Conclusion 55  

CHAPTER 7: REFLECTION 57  

REFERENCES 61  

APPENDICES 68  

Appendix 1:   Interview Results Open Coded 68  Appendix 2:   Survey Results in Detail 73  Appendix 3:   Conchie and Donald’s (2008) model of safety specific functional and

dysfunctional trust and distrust 74  Appendix 4:   Survey Questionnaires, Internet Version 75  

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LIST OF ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS ERP Enterprise Resource Planning (System)

EASA European Aviation Safety Agency

EN European Standard (“Europäische Norm”)

HBR Harvard Business Review

HRO High Reliability Organisation

IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency

ICAO International Civil Aviation Organisation

ISO International Standardisation Organisation, also used for

Standards as issued by ISO

KPI Key Performance Indicators

PDCA Plan-Do-Check-Act (Deming Cycle)

QM Quality Management

SMS Safety Management System (ICAO term)

SQMS (integrated) Safety & Quality Management System

TQM Total Quality Management

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INDEX OF DISPLAYS AND TABLES Displays and Tables are allocated by chapter

Display 2.1. “Fixes that fail”, Norway Petroleum Institute, 2004

Table 2.4 Elements of trust by authors (not laterally corresponding)

Table 3.2.d Interview Schedule

Table 4.1.b: Themes from Interviews

Table 4.2.b Data requirements table

Table 4.2.c Survey Question Composition

Table 4.3.b Combined Ranking of Findings table

Diagram 5.2. Adapted model from Conchie and Donald (2008)

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND

High Reliability Organisations (HROs) are characterised by their exposure to high risks,

where ‘compromised reliability’ (Weick and Sutcliffe, 2007) would result in ‘severe

harm’, often to lives. Aircraft operations and maintenance belong to this group amongst

nuclear power generation, emergency medical treatment, continuous chemical

processing and others.

In order to increase safety in aviation HROs various systems have been invented,

implemented and improved over the last few decades when the aviation industry has

undergone continuous development and refinement of standards and requirements,

shifting from earlier, predominantly reactive towards more recent pro-active paradigms.

Quality management systems emerged out of military standards and have been

modelled into ISO standards. Later, Total Quality Management methodologies,

encompassing all organisational aspects of Quality Management, and from the late

1990’s onwards Aerospace Industry requirements, EN/AS 9100, were becoming

standard. Today’s integrated Safety and Quality Management Systems (SQMS) are the

latest regulatory initiative to build an all encompassing and pro-active systematic to

improve aviation safety performance.

As present literature and industry publications reflect, little empirical research is

currently available on the manageability or effects of trust in HROs with operative

quality and safety management systems.

1.2 THE DILEMMA OF QUALITY MANAGEMENT AND TRUST

Compliance driven Quality Management Systems rely primarily on specific, measurable

and quantifiable parameters. The most common framework, TQM, has yet to overcome

some major “embedded contradictions”, as argued by Harnesk and Abrahamsson

(2007).

This goes hand in hand with frequent observations by the author, senior consultant in

Quality and Safety Management Systems in the aircraft design, production and

maintenance.

Those observations would confirm a decline of perceived trust among and between

operative staff, inspectors and management due to increasingly rigid procedures,

leaving less room for personal responsibility and decision-making. A similar effect on

the intraorganisational perception of trust had been attributed to the former triple

inspection procedures in safety critical areas which had been perceived as distrust

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against committed and experienced staff, worsened by inflexible quality management

procedures.

Aircraft accident investigations showed that overreliance in peer performance, coupled

with perceived managerial distrust and disrespect for the individuals’ honest

engagement and reliability, have led to an erosion of procedures initially created for

flight safety. Maintenance inspectors began to rely on the checks performed by their

colleagues before or after their own inspections.

There was no room to discuss, talk, question, and explain, apart from processing only

the information that had been formally asked for or already pre-entered on one of the

forms to fill and pass on. Pure adherence to policies, procedures and regulations was

demanded and only the information documented on forms has been considered valid.

As a remedy, hangar staff have, over the last 10 to 15 years, increasingly been

engaged in self-checking procedures of their own and peer-performed work, and

double checks are only performed for safety critical operations. This is considered as

an attempt to cure some of the disengagement of shopfloor staff. An increase in

procedural accuracy and reduction of safety critical incidents in aircraft maintenance

followed in general, yet the case of procedural inflexibility without room for non-routine

information is not considered solved.

1.3 HUMAN FACTORS TRAINING - DID IT BUILD TRUST?

From the early to mid 2000’s onwards regulators have mandated recurring Human

Factors awareness training for operative staff. While such awareness may be very

valuable in understanding personal glitches towards desired performance, the

regulators’ shortfall to make these trainings equally mandatory for management has,

among staff in many organisations, created the impression of blaming and finger

pointing at operators alone for many misses, ignoring organisational and managerial

contribution. This resulted in perceptions of unfairness and imbalance which,

consequently, blurred the importance of viewing organisational and managerial actions

or inactivities as equal contributors to events, with a negative effect on building trust

and employee participation.

1.4 SAFETY MANAGEMENT INTRODUCED

Worldwide Safety Management System implementation has been mandated by the

ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation) in 2006 with an implementation period

until January 2012, initiating a shift from compliance driven to performance-based

metrics in aviation SMS, welcomed by both, national regulators and the industry as a

major improvement of aviation safety in general. In SMS KPI are self-established by

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the organisation, based on their own evaluation and commitment to attainable goals.

Supported procedures and manuals, corresponding to QM principles like Deming’s

PDCA cycle of continuous improvement, those KPIs, along with the supporting

documents and the performance are monitored by regulators.

Novel to those SMS or integrated SQMS, today’s organisations widely rely on staff

involvement to report any and all hazards, risks, near misses, or contributing factors in

order to enable evaluation and mitigation of risks to improve safety performance.

Damage to employee’s individual commitment and willingness to share information has

been done, now the industry is facing a mixture of problems and challenges to solve in

order to promote organisational learning and sharing of information by all employees.

In addition to that, HROs are dealing with what Reason (1999) named ‘safety

paradoxon’, as safety is defined by the absence of events, while preparing for the

unexpected, dealing with non-events and curing unexpected events. All of this leaves

safety per se difficult to measure, define and improve.

Handling and processing of information is pivotal to the sound performance of an SMS.

The central question for today’s managers and team leaders is about how to

encourage their staff to share safety relevant information despite the fact that the

reporting individual may not always feel comfortable with content or context of reported

issues.

Reason (1997) pointed out that specific cultural settings are required, including an

“atmosphere of trust” that fosters and promotes such reporting, called “just culture”,

where a clear “line (is) drawn between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour”. This

idea has been picked up by regulators in differentiating between intentional and

unintentional and therefore punishable or non-punishable violations or misses in order

to fit this philosophy into the existing legislation. This regulatory framework requires for

organisations to clearly define the line between the different motivations for actions or

near misses in order to establish procedural justice for the reporting or affected

individuals to protect and warrant for fair treatment.

While just culture frameworks and non-punitive reporting guidelines may encourage

operators and inspectors to file more reports the question remains open about how to

achieve a higher level of intra-organisational coherence, commitment, learning and

sharing in order to win true engagement, not only formal participation.

“Trust, but verify”, this diction ascribed to both Vladimir Lenin and Ronald Reagan,

highlights the current dilemma between fulfilling requirements for formal, fair and solid

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procedural and regulatory frameworks on one side and achieving a high level of

commitment, understanding and flexibility for adaptation and learning on the other. In

particular, the manageability of trust shall be investigated in this study and its

contribution to safety performance. Managers shall be supported in finding potential

measures or tools to foster an atmosphere or culture of openness and freedom from

fear in order to perform better in safety.

1.5. RESEARCH QUESTION

The above sections suggest that trust is important for safe and reliable operations in

the aviation industry. The question this project will investigate is “How can trust be

managed in order to increase safety performance in aircraft maintenance?”

1.6. RESEARCH CONTEXT

In order to investigate the research question, this project studies different aircraft

maintenance organisations within one narrow national cultural context: German-

speaking Switzerland, all within common specific settings:

- Quality and Safety Management Systems are mandatory to identical standards;

- all of the operative staff have undergone Human Factors training;

- the organisations operate within one specific field of business and professional

culture;

- all of them are required to employ dedicated Quality and Safety Managers.

Three interviews were carried out: one large global organisation with almost 3000 staff

on site, one mid-size 100-staff, and one small organisation with approximately 20 staff

were selected, but only the largest of those three is running shifts. All of them maintain,

modify and repair aircraft that are in commercial use for passenger transportation,

although in slightly varying sectors. The survey was administered in three

organisations, two mid-size of about 60 staff as well one smaller organisation which

already participate in the interviews.

1.7. AIMS

The project aims to:

1) extend previous research on the role of trust in safety management in aviation

(Burns and Flin, 2004).

2) to make recommendations for managers on how to build trust within the aircraft

maintenance industry.

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The limitations of this piece of research are drawn within the official concept of safety,

as presented by ICAO (see chapter 2).

Although transferability of findings between different industries may be highly likely, this

paper focuses on the aviation industry only in German speaking Switzerland leaving

room for further studies in different geographical, professional and organisational

settings.

1.8. PROJECT OUTLINE

This study consists of seven chapters. Chapter 2 reviews the literature on trust and

safety management. The methodology for this research will be outlined in chapter 3.

The remaining four chapters are each dedicated to the findings, the discussion of

findings, recommendations and conclusion, and personal reflection.

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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW This part reviews secondary data, based on the availability and searchability of recent

academic publications and books. The following methodologies have been applied:

- following up on authors, topics and links as found in previously known literature;

- key word search in via the University’s web access, the knowledge providers

listed therein, and via Google and Google scholar;

- via websites of governmental and international agencies, such as ICAO, Civil

Aviation Authorities, Health and Safety Agencies;

- Academic and industry-related publications and magazines;

Repeated screening, following up on new leads and repeated filtering have helped to

scrutinize and sort information.

2.1 PREAMBLE

Trust is recognized as indispensable in a good safety culture in high-risk environments,

confirmed in literature by James Reason (1997), Conchie, et al. (2006a), Cox, et al.

(2006), Conchie and Burns (2008), to name the latest and most prominent research.

The shortfalls of Quality Management in terms of not increasing safety by constraining

the exchange of information to standardised and formal data only has been highlighted

in James Reason (1997) and can be confirmed through the author’s personal

experience and observations. Deming (1994 in Li and Yan, 2009), known for the Plan-

Do-Check-Act cycle helped shaping Total Quality Management, but also warned in

1994 (in Li and Yan 2009) that lack of trust would lead to self-protecting islands

impairing the organisation. If too rigid, TQM compliance based approaches, as

practiced nowadays, might lead to new vicious cycles, as presented in Display 1 from

the Norwegian Petroleum Safety Authority (1998) 1 . This display highlights two

additional areas that are negatively affected by the typical „blame and train“ (industry

jargon) cycle: first, the reduction of trust, leading to fewer safety reports submitted and

second, the resulting increase of complexity by inappropriate fixes to underlying

problems.

Safety management systems, per definition, build massively on the participation of all

staff by reporting safety relevant issues free from fear of sanctions, unless malign

intention had motivated actions. These principles of non punitive reporting and just

culture have been discussed, tested and applied over years in the major high hazard

industries, such as nuclear, transportation, and petroleum, are now a part of the

constituent and worldwide applicable basic regulation for aviation safety management

1 Norway P.S.A.O. in HSE and Culture

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in the ICAO Document 9859 (2009). The technical side of this research will deal with

safety management systems (SMS) in the context of aircraft maintenance and

operations. In 2006 (revised 2009), the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO)

issued Standards and Recommended Practices (SARP’s) for mandatory

implementation by all member state agencies until January 2012.

Display 2.1. “Fixes that fail”, Norway Petroleum Institute, 2004

2.2 SAFETY MANAGEMENT IN BRIEF

The ICAO (2009) defines “Safety (as) the state in which the possibility of harm to

persons or of property damage is reduced to, and maintained at or below, an

acceptable level through a continuing process of hazard identification and safety risk

management.“

As “Safety is increasingly viewed as the outcome of the management of certain

organizational processes,” (ICAO, 2009), it is further concluded that “elimination of

accidents and/or serious incidents“ will remain illusional, although “desirable“, in

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“dynamic operational“ settings (ibid.).

Hazards will always be part of aviation operations (ibid.), and it is the product of

likelihood times severity of impact that determines the level of risks. While the

underlying methodology for the calculation of risks and consequent mitigation may be

executed or initiated by smaller groups within organisations, behavioural,

organisational and cultural factors play a major role in controlling these risks: first of all,

the identification and reporting of hazards by all persons in the organisation, next, a

high level of alertness to prevent complacency along with building commitment to

follow safe practices and standards, and a framework to deal with unexpected

outcomes at work.

Shifting from reactive treatment to pro-active prevention through learning from errors,

mishaps, incidents, and other undesired outcomes reporting plays a pivotal role in

shaping organisational safety culture. All of those reports are then collected, analysed

and handed to an action group, and staff is kept informed via feedback loops, “one of

the most important elements in the process“ (Fleming and Lardner, 2002).

Many reports are likely to carry some uncomfortable information for those who report,

or for their peers, often leading to fear of punishment or retribution. Sanctioning of

reporters is therefore the major roadblock on the way to an open reporting culture.

The term just culture’ has been shaped in the 1990’s by Reason, Hudson, and others in

order to define a framework to encourage reporting, particularly self- and peer-

reporting. By enacting punitive measures only on grossly negligent or intentional

violations on one side and highlighting, even rewarding, acting responsibly on the

other, a greater number of reports will be triggered through obvious judicial fairness.

This two-fold approach has a direct impact on safety performance of the organisation

as a greater number reliability-diminishing hazards and risk can be treated for

prevention.

The Just culture model has recently been further developed by Hudson et al. (2006)

into a model of managed expectations. Clearly communicated rules and expectations

empower employees to take their own decision in matching explicit expectations,

entrusting them with part of the decisionmaking.

In aviation, like in any other business, it will not be economically viable to strive for

absolute certainty, reliability, or safety, which leaves operators with the

production/protection dilemma. In his 1997 book “managing the risks of organisational

accidents” James Reason presents the model of balancing production and protection,

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opposing the popular view that companies should do everything for safety. The most

practicable level of risk mitigation has been named “ALARP” (“as low as reasonably

practicable”) (ICAO, 2009), which is now recognized as the measure of acceptability to

all stakeholders.

2.3 DEFINITIONS AND CONCEPTS OF TRUST

The Oxford Dictionary defines trust as “firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of

someone or something” (2012).

Regarding organisational research, a widely recognized and supported definition is

found in Rousseau et al. (1998): “Trust is a psychological state comprising the intention

to accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations of the intentions or behaviour

of another.”

This definition is frequently applied on models and frameworks within which trust exists,

according to Rousseau et al. (1998), and has been widely supported in literature since,

substantiating the validity as the underlying definition for this paper. It also reflects an

earlier description of trust as the “willingness to be vulnerable” (Mayer et al.,1995).

For the purpose of this paper the differentiation between cognitive and rational forms of

trust such as a competitive or cooperative attitude between persons in business

transactions (Bigley and Pearce, 1998) shall be drawn against trust as a more personal

characteristic, being a “subjective probability“ (Rotter, 1971, Gambetta, 1998, both in

Bhattacharya et al., 1998).

Trust can also be seen as a trade-off between situational control for the gain of

controlling who shall be trusted and what we trust to be the benefit of this act, yet

possibly blurred by expectations of social behaviour (Midden and Huijts, 2009, Löfsted

and Cvetkovich, 1999). Such trade-offs also include the cognitive or affective balance

of risks between different sorts of benefits, an aspect that will be referred to below.

Frequently, Midden and Huijts' (2009) aspect of trust as enabler or ‚”lubricator” for

innovative and creative behaviour can be found quoted in managerial (Kramer, 2009)

and academic literature (Löftsted, 2008).

Other discussions refer to the level of propensity to trust varying with the level of self-

relevance of the subject to the trustor where closer proximity to the outcome is likely to

promote or evoke affective decisions, or actions (Midden and Huijts, 2009), a concept

used by Kramer (2009) to formulate basic rules for trust-building behaviour for the

readership of HBR by giving recommendations, such as creating simple gestures of

physical proximity, like greeting rituals (handshakes, etc.) to create a sense of solidarity

to strengthen the “propensity to cooperate”.

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2.4. ASPECTS AND ELEMENTS OF TRUST

Based on the suggestion by Li and Yan (2009) trust within organisations could be

conceived as four-directional: horizontally, among staff and teams, and vertically, in

superior – subordinate relations.

Generally, trust comprises of overt and covert, implicit and explicit elements (Burns et

al., 2006). Bolman and Deal (2008) contrast a task focused “overt, conscious level”

with a process and relationship oriented, “more implicit level”.

From the early and mid nineties onwards, trust has also been defined as multi-staged

and sequential construct by Shapiro (1992) and Lewicki and Bunker (1996) both

referred to in Clark and Payne (2006). These three stages would comprise of “calculus,

knowledge, and identification-based trust” and as such would be found in

organisational and professional relations.

Schoorman, Mayer, Davis (1995, 2007) described a construct of three parallel existing

major antecedents of trust: ability, benevolence and integrity. Mishra (1996, in Clark

and Payne, 2006), presents four, very similar dimensions: competence, openness,

concern, and reliability, and Butler, quoted by Clark and Payne (2006) defined ten

major aspects of trust. To give a better overview, a listing of different aspects of trust is

presented in table 2.4 below.

Table 2.4 Elements of trust by authors (not laterally corresponding)

Butler (1991) Schoorman, et al (1995)

Clark& Payne (1997 in Clarke et al., 2006)

Mishra (2004, in Clarke et al., 2006)

Hurley (2006)

“conditions” “antecedents” “dimensions” “dimensions” “aspects” openness benevolence competence concern risk tolerance receptivity ability integrity competence level of

adjustment availability integrity fairness reliability relative power fairness consistency openness security loyalty loyalty number of

similarities promise fulfilment

openness alignment of interests

integrity benevolent concern

competence capability discreteness predictability and

integrity consistency level of

communication

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In their example “trust between thieves”, Schoorman, et al. (1996) also debate the

separabilty of those antecedents, where benevolence and ability alone, without the

third component, integrity, would suffice to constitute trust between peers. Further

evidence for the distinctiveness of those concepts is highlighted in Gill, Knoll (2011)

where the perception of procedural justice, according to Frazier et al. (2010), would be

more related to “perceived integrity and ability” rather than benevolence. In the same

paper by Gill and Knoll, the findings of Payne and Clark (2003) are quoted for “high risk

and safety sensitive” operations, where the supervisors’ ability is regarded to be of

higher importance to staff than perceived benevolence or integrity, equally when

trusting a subordinate, where ability was found to be the strongest contributor. Knoll

and Gill (2011) conclude that trust between supervisors and subordinates is shaped by

mutual dependence on outcomes, mutual vulnerability is therefore based on common

interest in good quality of delegated tasks’ execution.

A more radical view on the relation between trust and ability in technocratic systems is

presented by Mishra (2006, in Clarke et al., 2006) who put ability as prerequisite to

trust in any forms, as the absence of ability would render the outcomes of actions

unimportant to the trustor.

Apart from relationship-based perspectives, perceptions of trust in social exchange

could be considered character-based as presented by Clark and Payne (2006), based

on Dirks and Ferrin’s approach. Employee empowerment as a form of leadership-

member exchange and form of reciprocative trust, as Gill (2006) summarizes, means

showing confidence in the correct execution of tasks by trusting the employee to

pursue the goals and mission in their own personal way with the risk that mistakes will

be made.

2.5 TRUST WITHIN ORGANISATIONS

“Leadership without mutual trust is a contradiction.”

(Bennis, 1989 in Hoogervorst et al., 2004)

Trust as a part of an organisational culture is shaped by many different aspects,

conditions, antecedents, dimensions, as highlighted in table 2.4. As in societies, trust

within organisations helps to “lubricate” and facilitate “complexity reduction between

societal and regulatory” processes, as Löftstedt (2005) suggests in his model about

society-regulator interaction, a justifiable similarity for HROs which are not only

externally regulated by governmental agencies, but also internally by quality, safety,

and compliance agents. Implicitly and explicitly present, trust can also be considered

as provider of the “emotional glue that binds leaders and followers together“ (Bennis

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and Nanus in Gill, 2006), acting as ‘lubricant’ in Leader-Member-Exchange. This

supports the view of Bigley and Pearce (1998), who stated that the research on trust in

the context of business had shifted from the focus on transaction cost economics

towards the view on trust as being “a phenomenon that could affect certain kinds of

governance costs“.

In intraorganisational conflicts emotions can be considered as having positive

“mediating effects” on perceptions of trust, as Chen and Ayoko (2012) claim, quoting

Ronson and Peterson and argue that conflicts have a supporting effect on the

development of trust within groups, fostered by “prolonged conflict duration”, as

empirically found by Ayoko and Pekerti (2008 in Chen, Ayoko, 2012).

This finding is underpinned by the IAEA (2002), stating that suppressed or ignored

conflicts would lead to problems surfacing elsewhere, and if not solved, conflicts in

safety critical areas would ‘degenerate’ trust into ‘mutual blame and mistrust’.

Consequently, employees need to feel comfortable in addressing conflicts, and in doing

so employees show confidence.

The dealing with conflicts and emotions may create a sense of proximity and conscious

alignment of interests, horizontally and vertically, resulting in trust as the “reasonable

response” according to Hurley (2006).

Higher performance and satisfaction among a team, as Earle (2010a) argues, will

result from shared values and mutual trust. Generally, the resulting increased

psychological safety reduces anxiety and uncertainty found among relative strangers,

as Bhattacharya et al. (1998) state, thereby supporting the construct of “propensity to

trust”. According to Schoorman, Mayer, Davis (2007) trust at the beginning of relations,

is more of a dispositional nature. With longer duration of relationships, trust becomes

increasingly relational, built mostly through the perception of ability and integrity.

Benevolence, on the other side, as the earlier quoted third dimension in Mayer’s, et al.

1995 model, possesses a stronger long-term orientation and will only play a later role in

building trust.

Personal traits and situational ambiguity are also playing an important role in

interpersonal trust within organisations, particularly in team-building.

Reason (1997) has suggested, for the benefit of general alertness, to compose teams

of diverse characters, backgrounds, levels of experience, among others properties, in

order to widen the collective awareness by ‘pool(ing) observations’. In addition to

Reason’s idea of team diversification, Weick (1987) described the benefits of

consistent teams in nuclear reactor control by establishing a “collective requisite

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variety”, addressing the benefits of pooled and combined abilities and capabilities and

an enhanced level of trust in others and oneself as actor, observer and reporter.

Participative remuneration, (not to be confused with benevolent donoring, or

performance related initiatives), socialisation, and empowerment are prominent actors

among the most common ways to create common interest and identity, as

Bhattacharya (1998) summarizes, through the creation of common concern for each

other’s outcomes and mutual trust by proximity.

Criticism of the instrumentalisation of trust and distrust and the use of those terms in

synonymity with cooperation and competition among staff, had been repeatedly

expressed in trust research, see Bigley and Pearce (1998), summarized by

Schoorman, et al. (2007). However, trust and distrust need not be seen as opposing,

but separate dimensions, as formulated by Burns et al. (2006) as well as earlier by

Lewicki, McAllister, and Bies (1998, in Schoorman, Mayer, et al. 2007).

Burns et al. (2006) provided empirical proof that trust and distrust are positively

correlated, therefore simultaneously present. This finding entails potential implications

for safety management systems as discussed in the same 2006 paper. Accordingly,

moderate levels of distrust would lead to an underlying attitude of being wary in parallel

to trusting, preventing from complacency, one of the potential “dark sides” of trust,

discussed by Reason (1997). This concept of distrust as a valuable attitude to prevent

from such effects has been named “creative mistrust” by Hale (2000). The value of this

wariness for high-reliability operations is then (Reason 1997) carried further,

advocating for a state of ‘chronic unease’ in order to prevent from falling into the

comfort zone of illusional safety. This illusion would be produced through the absence

of events or presence of non-events, the “safety paradoxon” (Reason, 1997), attributing

this back to Weick’s (1987) discussion about the “deceptive and misleading” diagnosis

of seemingly stable operations.

Implicit communication plays a major role in various forms of trust. Top management

first, managers are unquestionably regarded as role models by staff. Allert and

Chatterjee (1997), among others, promote the idea of trust largely built upon the way

how the organisation’s leaders communicate, how they listen to staff, how relations are

built and maintained. Clarke and Ward (2006) extend this view to the idea of

developing leadership facilitating safety culture in high-risk organisations through

having a leader capable of consulting, inspiring, “rationally persuading” to motivate

employees’ commitment to safety reporting if their leaders listen to feedback from staff

or show empathy. It has been widely suggested by Blau (1964) and Fox (1974), both

quoted in Cox, et al. (2006), that trust is being reciprocated in organisations, with

23

Hurley (2006) and Kramer (2009), giving practical suggestions for managers how to do

so.

Explicit communication through policies, symbols, statements, declarations etc. is of

unquestioned importance to building trust in organisations, but it is mostly the

congruence between explicitly and implicitly, intentionally or unintentionally

communicated messages to evoke trust, scepticism, or, on the long run cynicism

among staff, as Hoogervorst et al. (2004) point out. Inconsistent messages produce

conflict between perceived realities or organisational, professional, cultural values,

which may also be the case when politics within organisations are not fully aligned,

which then could “occupy (a) great amount of employee’s time and energy”, as

highlighted by Li & Yan (2009).

Another aspect of leadership responsibility is the alignment of values within all aspects

of operations inside the organisation, as well as establishing common goals, mutual

needs, or expectations, not only to foster trust, but also to motivate by creating

directional communality, as for example stated by Burns (1979, in Hoogervorst, et al.

2004).

2.6 TRUST, RISK AND SAFETY IN ORGANISATIONS

“The interplay of trust, risk, and control systems continues to be a much debated topic.”

(Schoorman, Mayer, Davis, 2007)

The introduction of formal SMS raised questions in the industry about which cultural

aspects should result in higher safety outcomes. Before the ICAO issued their globally

valid document 9859 “Safety Management Manual” in 2006, various publications from

the nuclear and oil and gas industry turned the focus on non-regulative, soft factors as

highly important actors in organisational safety.

In 2002, the IAEA stated that internal communications need to be based on mutual

trust and postulated, applying Edgard Schein’s three level model of organisational

culture, that the basic assumption “People can be trusted to do what is right” should be

a part of organisational safety culture. In consequence, related espoused values, e.g.

employee empowerment, and artefacts, such as formal and active contribution should

be visible. This would also require free flow of information through “a fully connected

network”, which would “only work if there is trust among all the participants.”

This is confirmed by the Norway Petroleum Institute (2004) who underlines the

importance of an anxiety-free climate of trust being essential to reporting where people

admit to their own mistakes, risking potential loss of psychological safety through

24

exposure, appearing incompetent, or losing face, as argued by Li and Yan (2004). The

Norway Petroleum Institute (2004) remarks, howerver, that confidential reporting, as

practised widely in various industries, should only be considered as “step in the right

direction”, when the goal is to establish a “strong sense of security and trust” to render

confidential reporting unnecessary.

According to Scott and Walsham (in Perry and Scott, 2009), one of the motivations to

report safety critical issues can be attributed to a system of personal and

organisationally shared values if the outcome of unsafe conditions poses a threat to

those values.

“People aren’t used to giving praise for reliability”, Reason (2000) quotes Weick to

address the problem of understanding the importance of safety procedures, hazard

reporting etc. in a well working and disturbance-free organisation. Referring to Weick,

James Reason (2000) shaped the term “safety paradox” for that particular ambiguity. It

seems paradox for people to report non-events and to follow procedures that are to

prevent from something that they had never seen happen, seldomly motivated by

emotional proximity or strong cognitive insight from earlier events.

Meeting this challenge by good governance is pivotal for establishing and managing a

good safety culture. This is addressed in most of the referenced publications by

stressing out the need for aligned values, clear communication and a high degree of

staff identification with the organisation. Lam (2004) states that “risk management is

about balancing processes and people“, and “the soft sides of risk management consist

of People, Integrity, Culture & Values, Trust & Communication” (Lam, 2004).

The almost synonymous use of the terms ‚trust’ and confidence’ in relation to trust and

risk, has spurred discussions in the academic world about the interplay of the aspects

of certainty, risk, and uncertainty in relation to the nature of trust, necessitating the term

‘confidence’ to be examined further.

A public academic debate about the difficulties of distinguishing trust from confidence

has been led between Siegrist (2010) and Earle (2010b). Earle (2010a) suggests a

combined model of trust, confidence and cooperation. Within this model, trust is

presented as relation and intention based, in difference to confidence as calculative

and ability based, relating to past experiences. Siegrist (2010) questions the validity of

this concept due to methodological concerns and uncertainties about establishing value

similarities. Further research on relation between the more forward oriented orientation

of trust (intentional) and the more backward looking (past-experience) nature of

25

confidence could no be found, this might present an interesting case for further

research.

Trusting, in a social and organisational context, involves trading off different sorts of

risks, as Löfsted and Cvetkovich (1999) line out. The prevention of physical risks, like

accidents or environmental risks, is traded in for social risks, or vice versa.

Consequently, the concept of trust as facilitator builds on expecting other actors’

behaviour producing desired outcomes while taking the risk that the outcome might not

conform to expectation when acting or when, for example, reporting within a SMS.

Löfsted and Cvetkovich (1999) specifically distinguish between personal, face-to-face

and impersonal, organisational forms of trust. In organisations, or operations, where

persons exerting critical tasks are often unknown, and therefore more distant to the

trustor risk management would, in consequence, be a more formal and structured act

in order to increase all participants’ confidence in those operations. One might

conclude that lower risks emulate higher confidence, based on higher levels of control,

as opposed to trust as facilitator to promote activities bearing higher risks and lower

levels of control. Bhattacharya et al. (1998) summarize this point by stating “trust

cannot exist in an environment of certainty; if it did, it would do so trivially.“

In this ambiguous field between trust and control, debate has been about trust and

control being alternate concepts (Schoorman, et al., 2007), but not mutually exclusive.

This may well be stretched to fit to aviation safety, as control and regulation are going

hand in hand to ensure compliance to legal and technical standards.

Within, or on top of this framework, trust is necessary to promote the propensity to

social risk exposure (see Das and Teng, 2004) when participating in the reporting

process in often uncertain and unpredictable situations. Trust is thereby filling the

critical gap in the risk trade-off (Weick, 2007), for those who report non-standard issues

and non-events, thus balancing perceived risks.

2.7 THE ‘DARK’ SIDE OF TRUST

“If you are convinced that your organisation has a sound safety culture, you are almost

certainly mistaken”. (James Reason, 1997)

In his 2009 HBR Article, Kramer paints a detailed picture of the ‘dark sides’ of trust,

stating that “virtually any indicator of trustworthiness can be manipulated or faked.” The

innate human propensity to trust is enhanced by similar social background,

physiognomy, supported by neurochemistry, and trusting behaviour is rewarded by

positive emotions. This comes at a price: Connell and Mannion (2006) consider overly

26

trust-based relationships within power and knowledge asymmetric relationships

between individuals to be the major contributor to disfunctionally complacent, or “cosy“

and even exclusionary formations of groups or groupthink. Both would inhibit open

exchange of information and the reception of shared values. In addition to that, Cox et

al. (2006) argue that complacency can lead to organisational blindness, based on

comfortable trusting experiences and non-events.

Faking trust, according to Kramer (2009), is a frequent phenomenon, created by

simulation of similarities in values, social attachment or other social engineering

techniques, e.g. the provision of fake references from trusted third parties (‘transitive

trust’). The propensity to being mislead is further supported by the trustors’

confirmatory bias, ergo the ‘proclivity to see what we want to’, and our ‘implicit

theories’, the natural inclination to correlate observable traits to stereotypes stored in

our brains, thus evoking a different reality about the trustee. Simple verification

experiments conducted by Kramer (2009) prove our unrealistically overoptimistic

attitude, making us “extremely vulnerable” to manipulation through faked signs of

trustworthiness.

Williams (2007 in Li and Yan, 2009) presented three major interpersonal risks within

hierarchical workplace relationships: “harm from opportunism, unintended neglect of

individual interests by others and identity damage during interactions” seriously

harming the propensity for affective trust. This affective interpersonal trust, observed by

Li and Yan (2009) is necessary for people “to open oneself” and participate in social

exchange and trusting behaviour.

Dunn and Schweitzer (2005) suggest that emotions influence trust and thereby create

unreliable behaviour, while emotional attachment between persons can lead to a higher

propensity to taking higher or sudden risks, a point that is supported, too, by

Schoorman et al. (1996), showing that supervisors tend to engage in higher risk with

employees they trust.

To counterbalance these undesired effects, risks, behaviour unreliabilities, Turner and

Pidgeon (in Cox et al., 2006) suggest that “safety culture is dynamic, contingent, and

unstable”, contrary to a rigid, stable and inflexible construct. This corresponds to

Reason’s (1997) “chronic unease”, presented earlier, and helps to facilitate healthy

scepticism, balance distrust and deal with conflicts in order counterbalance these

common fallacies.

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2.8 SUMMARY

For the purpose of this paper, only two forms of trust are considered relevant for HROs:

intraorganisational trust and interpersonal trust within organisational frameworks.

The view that trust and confidence are two separate mutually exclusive concepts is

adopted for this study. This distinction and the relation between reporting, taking risks

and balancing conflicts, uncertainties and emotions will have implications on how trust

will be further investigated in this study and Rousseau’s (1998) definition of trust shall

be referred to from here onwards.

The importance of leadership and shared value systems has been highlighted, as well

as the value of judicial fairness to incentivise safety reporting and the recognition of the

personal dilemma of reporters and the importance of their contribution to a functioning

SMS of an HRO.

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CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH

3.1 INTRODUCTION

Positivism and phenomenology are two research philosophies that stand out in

management research literature: positivism assumes that there is an objective reality

whereas phenomenology assumes the existence of multiple realities.

Positivists argue that occurrences, experiences, events and trends can be observed

and measured objectively. The positivist philosophy presumes that the researcher

should not impact on the data being collected or how it is analysed because objective

methods are used. In the social sciences, it is inclined towards the use of quantitative

data and statistical analysis.

Phenomenology is concerned with the study of experiences from the perspective of the

individual and as such is subjective in nature. Phenomenology is inclined towards the

use of qualitative methods and accepts that the researcher can impact on the data

being collected and how it is analysed.

This project is about trust in high reliability organizations. The definition of trust adopted

for use in this project is Rousseau’s (1998) definition of trust as a psychological state

based on a willingness to be vulnerable. This definition is consistent with a

phenomenological approach as it recognizes multiple subjective realities (i.e. different

people will experience trust differently).

In this mixed method approach a survey will be informed by interviews, which are

carried out first. Interviews are widely used in management research to yield qualitative

data in order to explore a subject and its phenomena, particularly if non-structured or

semi-structured interviews are used. Even when the interviewer’s bias is taken into

account, interviews can provide new and unexpected insights that reflect the

interviewee’s attitude to a high extent. Semi-structured interviews will be employed in

this study.

A survey, one of the main quantitative research designs in management research,

does neither interfere with naturally occurring events nor does it try to control them,

simply drawing a snapshot of what is happening usually by asking people about it.

This project will adopt the survey design for the generation of quantitative data. It

usually involves the use of questionnaires but other methods like interviews (yielding

qualitative data) lend themselves to this research design as well.

Employing a mixed-method qualitative study is therefore defended by the nature of the

research subject, dealing with multiple realities of individuals.

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3.2 INTERVIEWS

3.2.a Justification for using interviews

The first part of primary data collection for this project consists of semi-structured with

three key persons. In a next step, the responses were open coded from the notes

taken during the interviews in order to extract the most relevant topics from which the

survey will be constructed.

Full data reliability cannot be ensured using this process due to interviewer bias and

the low number of interviewees. By interviewing three safety managers with a similar

professional expertise as the interviewer, some degree of communality in attitude and

bias shall be established. A further increase in data quality is achieved by omitting

probing and only asking open questions. As the author and interviewer is an

experienced aerospace auditor, opening and leading an interview in an appropriate

manner is considered to be part of the skillset applied. By open coding and listing

interview results, the bias of the author is supposed to be reduced to a minimum.

These interviews precede the questionnaire survey for the following reasons:

a) to get a broader view from industry experts in top and middle management about

how trust can be built/influenced;

b) adjust the research question based on qualified opinions from industry experts;

c) allow for the author to reflect on his own influence on the research design and

evaluation as being a practitioner in the field in a double role.

d) interviews have been considered more appropriate to explore the topic in greater

depth and breadth instead of asking for mere input of data in writing from

experienced executives;

The interviews have been conducted in a semi-structured way in order to

accommodate for flexibility to follow unanticipated leads for deeper exploration of the

issues that would arise during the interview by 1) allowing for flexibility in the sequence

of addressing topics and 2) sorting complex issues. Some of the issues were answered

during the natural flow of the interview. This worked very well towards an explorative

interview style which would be hindered by ‘ticking boxes’ or following a rigid list of

questions.

3.2.b Interview Participants

The selection of the interview participants followed the criteria of

a) expertise and professional background;

b) present role in an organisation fitting to the scope of this research;

30

c) personal accessibility to these persons and their willingness to support this study;

d) minimal differences in professional and organisational culture;

An initial email request to three well known Quality and Safety Managers in the Swiss

Aviation Industry, followed by a telephone brief aimed at creating interest in the topic.

The suggestion to hold the interview at the offices of the participants and at a time of

their convenience was possible due to the author’s flexibility and supposedly has

supported the readiness of the participants to agree to the interview. In addition, it was

not deemed appropriate to ask executives to travel for a research interview.

None of the three persons addressed has declined, probably due to the fact that

informal personal contact had been established over the preceding years at various

industry-specific conferences. In the preparatory stage of the interviews, most recent

information about the organisation of the participants had been researched if any

breaking or disturbing news about the company would influence the interview or should

be addressed to avoid situations of ambiguity.

3.2.c Interview Procedure

Each interview was set for approximately 90 minutes leaving enough room to explore

unanticipated topics, issues or findings. Four days ahead of the interview, a schedule

of the interview questions and the Participant Information Sheet regarding research

ethics has been sent to the participants to inform the interviewees in advance and as a

gentle reminder of the arrangement.

Each interview was initiated by a short introduction to the researcher, his specific

motivation and interest in the topic as well as the framework, the central question and

the central idea of exploring on the possibilities for guidance for managers in this area.

Additional interest and motivation were evoked by giving a few insights into current

research literature, which led to brief and interesting initial discussions to ‘warm up’ for

the interview. Genuine interest in the topic existed in all three of the participants, two of

whom had recently contributed to the latest annual Swiss Aviation Safety Conference.

Referring to some similarities between the research topic and their contributions could

engage stronger interest.

Research ethics and data anonymity was reassured, and complete copies of collected

data were offered to be sent later. All participants signed the Consent Form ahead of

the interview and agreed to being recorded if it should turn out to be better than note-

taking, but, finally, no need was seen to record any of the interviews.

31

Taking notes instead of recording was preferred for the following reasons:

• no technical devices had to be controlled;

• no object of potential ‘merciless’ disclosure threatening the readiness to talk

openly;

• resource awareness: the interviews were carried out in German, transcripts

would have to be translated;

• no time-consuming transcription and evaluation needed;

The disadvantages of taking notes were taken into account.

• potentially losing some detail of questions or answers;

• losing direct quotes (although some direct quotes have been written down in the

interview notes);

• potential lack of focus.

Due to similar professional and cultural backgrounds no extra precautions as relating to

culture, language, or conflict of interest needed to be observed before or during the

interview.

3.2.d Developing the Interview Schedule

The questions for the interviews have been brainstormed through the lens of a Safety

Manager in a typical organisation. After sorting, all questions were then grouped and

reviewed again, based on the concept of separating all questions relating to

antecedents of trust within the specific setting for the interviews, from those questions

that carried an action focus based on the motivation to trust as input for the survey

questionnaires.

Care was taken to formulate open questions with the aim to derive management

motivations and organisational factors that would influence or trigger certain intentions

and consequent behaviour on the shop level through the lens of middle or top

management, rather than obtaining pure statements of management opinions. The

specific background and underlying reasoning for each interview question is detailed in

table 3.2.d, the detailed responses are displayed in Appendix 1.

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Table 3.2.d Interview Schedule

Interview Question Reasoning and background

a) How easy did you find top management commitment to the latest set of values and performance criteria as stipulated in the new SMS?

Commitment is supposed to be one of the typical management responsibilities in creation of trust. Also, it is stipulated by ICAO and has been highlighted as major management responsibility in high-risk organisations by Reason (1997), Clarke and Ward (2006) , Kramer (2009).

b) How much effort does it require to keep the commitment up at a good level?

Common opinion considers ‘walk the talk’ and ‘walk around’ as major factors in maintaining a good atmosphere of trust, doing so is part of the necessary communication. See also Hoogervorst et al.(2004) on consistency of communication, Hudson’s (2001) WALK/TALK dimensions

c) What are the biggest challenges balancing the new requirements with the existing culture?

New requirements (per ICAO, 2006) necessitate change, which poses challenges, especially in highly regulated/high compliance organisations. If not conducted carefully, change can result in increased scepticism, distrust, and disengagement.

d) Do you have any measure for the level of commitment of middle management?

Question out of interest if any quantifiable measure is known or applied in this field. Potential benchmark for the congruence between ‘talk’ and ‘walk’ by top management, as middle management is typically buffering misalignments in governance. See also Cox, et al.(2006)

e) What relation between ‘trust’ and ‘just culture’ and other elements (fairness, feedback, team building) do you see in your organisation?

Potential to discover any surfaced and consciously known antecedents of trust that are employed in shaping the organisation’s culture. See Butler (1991) in Clark et al. (2006), Conchie et al. (2006)

f) Do you think trust is an antecedent or a result of good communication?

Communication playing a crucial role in organisations, particular SMS, and is missing the goal if only applied top-down. Safety communication is defined by ICAO (2006), Norway Petroleum (2004), Earle (2010), Cox et al. (2006)

g) Do you have any campaigns that deal with the element of trust, any challenges/results?

What explicit artefacts, symbols, policies exist? Any practical experiences? Visibility? Referenced at Hoogervorst et al. (2004), Hudson (2001)

h) Do you see a change in the number and the way of submission of safety reports since formal commitment ?

Are there any success factors and visible results to gauge effectivity of change through SMS, based on willingness, awareness and propensity to report? See also Hale et al. (2010), Cox et al. (2006), Reason (1997) Hudson (2006)

i) Does trust ‘cost’? (Establishing, maintaining, dark sides, benefits, quantifiable)

A practioner’s question regarding other practitioners’ opinions or personal insights on this topic. No specific scientific literature found on the ‘cost’ of trust, only on the ‘dark’ side, e.g. Kramer (2009)

j) YOUR specific view on trust: any recommendations, visions, and ideas?

Open question, asking for personal inputs, ideas, free from constraints but related to the organisation.

k) What would YOU invest in relation to trust if you had a specific budget?

Open question, asking for personal inputs, ideas, free from constraints but related to the organisation.

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3.3 QUESTIONNAIRE SURVEY

In the second phase of primary data collection survey questionnaires have been

designed on the basis of the explorative interviews by combining the key topics

obtained through open coding of the interviews with Schoorman, Mayer and Davis’

antecedents of trust: ability and integrity. (Schoorman, et al. 2007)

3.3.a Sampling

Sampling was by means of non-probability purposive sampling through addressing

selected individuals of this relatively homogeneous population from three aircraft

maintenance organisations within one narrow national cultural context, German

speaking Switzerland, and with common specific settings in terms of legal and

regulatory compliance. All of them employ dedicated quality and safety staff for their

ICAO compliant SMS. For the survey two mid-size organisations with approximately 60

staff and one small organisation with approximately 20 staff gave consent to

participating. 133 potential respondents have been informed via e-mail, through their

superior or management, or directly by the author of the study with management’s

consent. In this way, quick access has been gained while meeting the tight timeframe

and limited resources available. Additional substantiation of the sampling methodology

is given by the population’s homogeneity in professional, cultural and organisational

aspects while having to ensure full anonymity of respondents, which excluded the

conducting of in-depth interviews for qualitative data gathering for explorative

purposes. The number of respondents directly addressed is considered sufficient

presuming a minimum of 25% response rate which would yield n=32, sufficient,

according to Stutely (2003, in Saunders, et al., 2009) producing results close to normal

distribution and is deemed to suffice in this case as three criteria for the acceptance of

such small sample are met: 1) small variance, 2) small population and 3) acceptance of

low accuracy.

The bias created through this high degree of control over the sample cases by specific

selection and addressing of participants is considered tolerable within the settings of

the survey, which is 1) already distorted through the recency of SMS requirements

resulting in low degrees of routine and, possibly, as full acceptance of this new system

is not achieved yet throughout all staff; 2) lower robustness and accuracy of findings

required as no generalisation for a whole industry or geography is intended, rather than

a cross-sectional in-depth investigation on a novel issue, mirroring a snapshot in time

for explorative purposes.

34

3.3.b Procedure

To match low cost with quick reach, response and evaluation while guaranteeing for

anonymity, an internet mediated self-administered questionnaire has been made

available via password via e-mail to each individual of the population, who are all

computer literate. The questionnaire has been translated into German by the (native

German) author to avoid semantic bias and distortion of responses. 20 forced choice

questions on a 5-category Likert-scale had been mixed to avoid similar topics

appearing sequentially. A complete sample of the actually administered questionnaire

is found in Appendix 4, including sources and targets of the translated questions for

reference.

To break the barrier, the questionnaire opens with a simple and easy to answer factual

question, 2 of the 20 questions are inserted to allow for checking internal reliability one

in the first third and one in the last third to allow for detection of fatigue bias. 10 days of

response time have been set, and initially slow response has been accelerated via a

restaurant voucher raffle among those participants who were willing to disclose their

email addresses without correlation to their responses.

As, due to time and resource constraints, full validation and pilot testing of the

questionnaire was not performed, two aviation specialists checked the questionnaire

for face validity and clarity of formulation, construct validity has not been tested, based

on the more exploratory focus of the study and lacking the intention to generate

predictive results.

35

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS In this chapter the findings of the interviews and the questionnaire survey are

presented. The implications of these findings will be discussed in subsequent chapters.

4.1. INTERVIEW RESULTS

4.1.a Participants

Three Safety Managers from aircraft maintenance organisations located in German

Switzerland were interviewed at their offices: in one large global organisation with

almost 3000 staff on site, one mid-size 100-staff, and one small organisation with

approximately 20 staff.

4.1.b Thematic Analysis

The notes taken during the interviews were thematically analysed, this analysis yielded

12 main themes, summarized in Table 4.1.

The numbers in parentheses indicate the sequential location of the results in table

4.2.b to inform the survey questions.

A few quotes from the interviews shall be presented to exemplify the themes identified.

One participant stated on safety culture: “If you don’t walk the talk as a leader, the

whole idea is led ad absurdum”, summarising the general importance of transparent

and consistent leadership, as reflected in key themes 2, 4 and 5, reflected in the so

called ‘promoters of trust intention’ in table 4.2.b. Another interviewee remarked that

middle management is “like a layer of clay“ in their respective large organisation, and

working to establish permeability in this layer by creating engagement, by actually

walking the talk, is one of the board’s greatest challenges at the moment, adding

authenticity to his attitude by talking about problems, regardless from which

organisational unit, in ‘we’ – form, proving a high level of integration and identification.

Those aspects of management commitment, transparency and explicit culture are

identified as promoters 3, 5, 7 and 8 in table 4.2.b.

All persons interviewed expressed corresponding views on the importance of

consistency in leadership, robustness of procedures, procedural safety and open and

transparent communication.

Two of the three interviewed stressed out the importance of a continuous learning

process, “...once you have started an SMS, you’re on the road to improvement, and

you’ll see what all else needs to be done and learnt...” all of them mentioning the

36

special need of enough, or more time to listen, inform and practise what is being said.

This taken to add substantiation to promoters 2 and 8.

One of the interviewed stated „we are more conscious now how important it is to

compose teams in a certain way, paying attention to political, personal, productive and

technical aspects“, supporting promoters 6 and 8. Asked the open question which

measure would be considered most important to start with to increase trust within the

organisation, the answer has been a very succinct “train the leader first!”. This

statement is used as amplifying input for the aspects 2, 3 and 4 of table 4.2.b.

One issue which surfaced during the interviews: The fairness, usefulness and

defendability of a financial reward system for cooperative behaviour is heavily disputed

within the organisation of which the Safety Manager has been interviewed. This

programme has been established to honour cooperative behaviour, which includes

reporting of safety relevant issues, proactive behaviour in problem solving, as well as

personal conduct. Implemented for a few months before the interviews were

conducted, it has been introduced instead of a raise. At the time of closure of this

study, the debate is ongoing.

37

Table 4.1.b: Themes from Interviews Interview Question, 3.2.d) Key Themes extracted a) Effort and effectiveness of management commitment to cope with latest changes. the introduction of SMS

- 360° transparency (1) - walk the talk, public ratification (2) - presence at shop level (10)

b) Effort required to keep management commitment at good level

- communication (3,8) - value congruence (6,7) - presence (10)

c) Challenges in balancing new requirements with cultural change

- transparent framework adaption (1) - overcome fear, establish common

understanding (9) - management as role model (3) - provide results (2)

d) Is management commitment being monitored?

- leadership call (3,4) - how to permeate „layer of clay“ (8) - be present, talk to people (3,10)

e) Interaction between trust, just culture and other cultural elements under change

- just culture as essential leadership task (4)

- balance acts sanctioning and fairness (12)

- talk, feedback, fairness (8,1,12) - robustness of processes (9)

f) Trust seen as result or antecedent of good communication

- growth process (4,5) - establish sense of community (6,7) - talk same language (7,8)

g) Intraorganisational campaigns to support change

- financial incentive model to reward cooperative behaviour (11)

- procedural safety (9) h) Tangible outcomes from change - positive trend in numbers of reports (2)

- positive trend in direct communication (10)

i) Does trust cost money to establish? - requires additional labour (5) - time consuming (2) - more attention on team composition to

manage groupthink, org. politics (8) j) Interviewees’ personal views and recommendations

- leaders, walk the talk! (2) - consistency & continuity most important

(4) - management: show presence (3,10)

k) Which measures are most important, from interviewees’ personal view

- train leaders (3,4) - involve everyone in trainings (2,3,5,10) - allow time for growth (4,5)

l) additional remarks from interviewees - „trust is the lubricant“ (6,7) - reduce ambiguity (1,8) - provide enough staff resources (2,5)

This translates into:

1 transparency

2 walk the talk

3 authenticity

4 leadership consistency

5 management commitment

6 value congruence

7 explicit culture

8 low ambiguity

9 procedural safety

10 management proximity

11 financial incentive

12 fairness

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4.2. DEVELOPING THE QUESTIONNAIRE

In addition to primary data as collected and condensed through interviews, secondary

data will inform the construction of the questionnaire.

A data requirements table has been established in order to weave in the interview

findings as promoters of trust intention, listed in the left column of table 4.2.b, with the

promoted/ induced antecedents of trust or cognitive dimensions of motivated

behaviour, found in the two upper rows.

In this way, specified managerial attitudes (‘promoters’) can be related to specific

outcomes (‘promoted’).

4.2.a Substantiation

Secondary data have been derived from authors and researchers based on the review

of literature. The concepts of ability, integrity and benevolence have been taken for

granted as defined by Schoorman et al. (1996), substantiated by ubiquitous occurrence

in literature. The details of those aspects to promote trusting behaviour have been

interpreted in the following way for practical application:

1) ABILITY is conveyed by consistent leadership, management commitment, low

ambiguity within the organisation

2) INTEGRITY is visible through transparency, authenticity, and ‘walking the talk’,

supported by consistent leadership and management commitment, high

similarity of values, procedural safety and justice, and perceived fairness.

3) BENEVOLENCE, defined by Schoorman et al. (2007) as a perceived bias of

‘non-egocentric intention to do good for the trusting party’.

In addition to those three antecedents of trust, two cognitive dimensions have been

identified by the author: confidence, as an action motivator, and sound criticism as

intrinsically trust-motivated behaviour that converts uncertainty and caution into

solution based questioning of a status quo. The first, confidence, is interpreted

according to Earle (2010a), who presents confidence as calculative and ability based,

relating to past experiences with respect to Bhattacharya et al. (1998) stating that trust

and certainty, ergo confidence, are mutually exclusive.

The second calculative aspect, sound criticism, has been synthesized based on the

concept of distrust, or creative mistrust (e.g. Hale, 2000). Based on the mutual

exclusivity of trust and confidence, the author of this study takes the liberty of creating

a new expression, establishing a similar mutual exclusivity on the side of non-trust and

non-confidence, calling it sound criticism, as opposed to confidence, due to its

39

constructive, clarification oriented and trusting behaviour. This is further substantiated

by Reason’s (1997) term of ‘chronic unease’, a concept of openness and criticism.

Details of those aspects are described as

4) CONFIDENCE, cognitive dimension, mutually supporting and building trust

(N.B: confidence is only related to individual behaviour, not financial or

economical considerations, e.g. investor confidence)

5) SOUND CRITICISM, constructive promoter of confidence and trust based on

the motivation to clarify uncertainties that would block reasonable action if left

unclarified.

In order to produce a slim and well receivable questionnaire, well researched aspects

from literature, such as trust motivators, have been taken for granted and as such been

sorted out, leaving room to investigate on lesser explored correlations. An example

would be the impact of leadership on the perception of integrity as proven by Conchie

et al. (2011), or Burns and Flin (2004).

Three additional questions have been inserted regarding the effect of financial

rewarding of safety reporting. This was provoked by one finding from the interviews

(see chapter 4.1) where financial reward for ‘cooperative’ behaviour was introuced

instead of a pay raise. As this is highly disputed, additional questions have been added

out of interest and potential potential future relevance.

Based on the same motivation, an additional question on the direct impact of financial

incentive on trust was inserted.

A copy of the questionnaire, as administered in the Internet, can be accessed in

Appendix 4

40

4.2.b Weaving data together Table 4.2.b Data requirements table, bold indicates the number of the selected correlation for the questionnaire.

Weaving the inputs together as described in the previous chapters allowed for

identifying the variables of the questionnaaire, as shown in the subsequent chapter.

The numberings do not correspond due to insertion of additional questions, as

described in chapter 4.2.a.

41

4.2.c Survey Questions Table 4.2.c Survey Question Composition no Relation Question 1 ‚walk the talk’ => sound

criticism If people are doing what they say, I feel more motivated to say what I think and ask critical questions. (I)

2 authenticity => confidence

You can trust somebody who talks in the same way with employees and who behaves in the same way at work and outside. (II)

3 leadership consistency => ability

A person who does not change his mood and treats everyone with the same respect is a very competent person. (III)

4 management commitment => ability

A person who declares in public what his policies and intentions are is a professionally competent person. (IV)

5 management commitment => integrity

Persons who publicly write what they intend to do and how they will do it, are definitely honest and respectable. (V)

6 management commitment => confidence

A person who publicly declares his policies and intentions will treat me fairly and correctly if I make a mistake. (VI)

7 value congruence => sound criticism

It would be easy for me to criticise or ask uncomfortable questions if I knew that this question would also be important to management. (VII)

8 explicit culture => confidence

If the company shows that they trust all employees, there is no risk to report a mistake. (VIII)

9 low ambiguity => ability Superiors who frequently inform employees about current issues and changes of the company are competent and knowledgeable. (IX)

10 low ambiguity => sound criticism

If employees are frequently informed about current issues and changes, the company is also interested if something needs to be improved or changed at the workplace. (X)

11 procedural safety => sound criticism

If the reports for the SMS are always treated the same way it is also o.k. to ask critical questions. (XI)

12 management proximity => sound criticism

When people from management are in the hangar or workshop it is a signal that critical questions are welcome. (XII)

13 financial incentive => benevolence

The level of salary is an indication of how well people are treated in the company. (XIII)

14 financial incentive => confidence

If there would be a financial reward for reporting my own mistakes this would be a sign that there is no risk to report. (XIV)

15 financial incentive => trust

If there would be a financial reward for reporting I believe it could be easier to report uncomfortable facts. (XV)

16 financial incentive => sound criticism

It would be much easier to criticise or ask uncomfortable questions if there would be a reward for reporting. (XVI)

17 fairness => sound criticism

If everybody is treated with the same fairness, nobody is afraid to say „I think something is wrong“. (XVII)

18 Reliability Question, opening question

How good could you apply some of the SMS training in practice? (XVIII)

19 Duplicate key question (based on strict general requirement)

Everybody is responsible to report if they notice a hazard. (XIX)

20 Duplicate key question (based on strict general requirement)

Safety Reporting is only relevant for Certifying Staff. (XX)

42

4.3 SURVEY RESULTS

4.3.a Participants

Three organisations participated in the survey, two mid-size of about 60 staff as well as

the small organisation with about 20 staff which already had been interviewed.

Out of 133 potential questionnaire respondents contacted via e-mail, 33 questionnaires

were returned on time but only 30 of them were completed fully. This suggests a

response rate of about 23%. Due to demographics and the typical image of masculine

– feminine job distribution experienced in this industry in Switzerland, no female hangar

and shop staff have been included in the questionnaire. Although age was not of

concern, a visit to the premises showed most staff to be within a 28 to 40 years of age,

(matching the author’s personal experience in this field), translating into approximately

7 to 18 years of professional experience, past the 4 year apprenticeship. Typically,

70% of the staff addressed are holders of at least a basic maintenance engineer

licence, proving additional professional maturity.

4.3.b Analysis

Table 4.3.b contains the combined and grouped mean average results from a 5

category Likert scale with 1 being ‘totally agree’, 3 equalling ‘neutral’ and 5 ‘totally

disagree’.

Through grouping of rankings additional relations can be detected and similar ranking

combinations have been grouped to a combined average.

Most recognisable, clear preference for promoters on cognitive dimensions has been

given by respondents. Sound criticism and confidence are promoted strongest by:

value congruence, ‘walk the talk’, fairness, explicit culture, procedural safety,

authenticity, and low ambiguity.

Management commitment has been rated to be of lower impact on promoting trust,

with a narrow preference of integrity over ability as promoter.

The impact on ability as antecedent of trust by low ambiguity and leadership

consistency is moderate in relation to sound criticism and confidence, although

management proximity as a trigger for sound criticism shows close to neutral, the

lowest score in that grouping.

All financial incentives score neutral to slightly negative, except for trust with a clear

negative score.

43

Table 4.3.b Combined Ranking of Findings table

In the open section for free worded input one respondent commented „I believe money

alone wouldn’t do it. Important is that criticism generates results. Otherwise people

become frustrated and would not bother to pass on improvements“ (translated by the

author)2

Detailed scores are listed in Appendix 2

2 „Ich glaube mit Geld allein ist es nicht getan. Wichtig ist, dass Einwände auch Wirkung zeigen. Ansonsten werden die Leute frustriert und bemühen sich nicht Verbesserungen weiter zu geben.”

Combined Ranking of Findings table (1= strongly agree, 5= strongly disagree, 3=neutral) so

und

criti

cism

conf

iden

ce

inte

grity

abili

ty

bene

vole

nce

trus

t

Combined Mean Average

value congruence 1.73

2.04

walk the talk 1.91 fairness 2.0 explicit culture 2.09 procedural safety 2.13 authenticity 2.21 low ambiguity 2.24 management commitment 2.30

2.35 management commitment 2.33

management commitment 2.42

low ambiguity 2.47

2.60 leadership consistency 2.61 management proximity 2.73 financial incentive 2.94

3.06 financial incentive 3.0 financial incentive 3.09 financial incentive 3.23

44

CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION

5.1 HOW DO THE FINDINGS OF THIS STUDY RELATE TO PRESENT RESEARCH?

With regard to the key question, the manageability of trust in HROs, interviews and

survey supported the following picture: the congruence between management’s actions

and their explicit intentions, tagged ‘walk the talk’, has by far provoked the strongest

positive response.

Cognitive based key themes were generally rated more positively than affective based,

such as integrity, benevolence, or ability. If this is due to respondents’ uncertainty

about ‘soft’ factors, selection or ambiguity of the questions asked, or different factors,

would remain open to further research and clarification.

While this survey could be criticised for lacking broader coverage and dispersion of key

themes and validated robustness, its general bias seems to produce a snapshot of the

factors that influence trust in HROs at a time of significant organisational change due to

the recency of new requirements, applicable to the whole industry.

It may be speculated if uncertainty and urgency to live up to the new expectations has

produced some sense of anxiety in the industry. Due to lack of experience or time for a

well managed change programme, ready-made concepts about leadership, building

trust or commitment, even if empirically unproven and untested, are well received and

implemented as they are suggested and described by ICAO and regulators. The

sudden implementation of such ready made concepts within an existing organisational

framework could additionally distort the snapshot taken from organisations. A

longitudinal study could be employed to clarify that issue.

Low ambiguity and explicit culture, along with consistent leadership, management

commitment and authenticity have also scored positively within this group. This could

be taken as an indication that leadership qualities of explicit nature (e.g. ‘explicit

culture’, ‘transparency’) as well as of implicit quality (e.g. ‘authenticity’, ‘commitment’,

‘consistent leadership’) support cognitive trusting behaviour, such as being confident

and exercising sound criticism.

Drawing a clear line between trust as affective and confidence/sound criticism as

cognitive based, these findings should support the suggestion that a wider array of

intraorganisational behaviour can be triggered through antecedents, borrowing this

model from earlier research by Knoll et al. (2010), Earle (2010a) and others.

On the other hand those findings also suggest that confidence and sound criticism

possess a focus on action or intention, and are not only backward-looking on past

experience, but are expected to motivate actions based on present perceptions. This

45

would partly contradict Earle’s (2010a) model of trust bearing an intentional focus as

opposed to confidence building on past experience. In addition to that, the concept of

trust asymmetry, as presented by Conchie and Burns (2008), is interpreted in this

context as supporting the view that trust relies, at least in part, on past experiences or

information about negative past events.

Consequently, it should be suggested that cognitive attitudes and behaviour, in addition

to trusting can be supported through antecedents alike, thus promote the stepping out

of the comfort zone and risk asking critical questions being confident that this would

match the organisational system of values, fairness and transparency. This idea is

reflected in Diagram 5 below.

Aspects of good communication have also scored positively. As reflected in literature

by Hudson (2001) and Earle (2010a), synonymising low ambiguity with high

transparency. These facets coincide with Kramer’s (2009) concept of increased

performance and employee satisfaction through clearly communicated and established

systems of shared values. Presumably, a skilful blending of shared value systems with

the human ‘propensity to trust’ (Kramer, 2009, Schoorman et al., 2007, Earle, 2010a),

could evoke higher employee identification with the organisation and its goals.

The lower scores of management proximity and leadership consistency raise additional

questions on the balance between affective and cognitive bias of technical staff in

general. One of the interviewed Safety Managers remarked people wanted to see

actions, not words. This might be extended to a preference for seeing actions by

management instead of them walking around. In analogy, management proximity could

be perceived as additional control, depending on general perceptions in the

organisation, open for additional clarification.

The strongest negative biases resulted from financially incentivised promoters of

trustworthiness. One of the organisations interviewed successfully runs a system of

materially rewarding cooperation and personally assumed responsibility, which could

be interpreted as one way to share and identify with the organisation’s value system.

Retrospectively, this debated aspect has not been awarded enough in the survey and

should be re-investigated if greater detail of insights would be required.

One of the interviewed managers presented a particular understanding of the

importance of team composition to prevent from complacency and internal political

runaways. Although these aspects are reflected in literature, the importance of

balancing instability and openness to foster critical behaviour and questioning needs to

46

be reflected by the readiness and confidence of employees to report and ask difficult

and challenging questions. Future research could provide for beneficial clarification and

insights, particularly about the way how this openness would affect peer-to-peer

relations in HROs.

5.2 RETHINKING EXISTING CONCEPTS

The aspect of benevolence has been scarcely covered within this study, only through

one survey question. Schoorman et al. (1996) stated that benevolence is the weakest

influential antecedent of trust within organisations, but also the one aspect taking the

longest time to build judgements on. For that reason benevolence has not been not

been assessed widely in this study.

Corresponding to Burns and Flin (2004), it is suggested that ability is the only concept

that can be largely assessed against comparative, measurable standards, such as

“skills, competencies, and characteristics that enable a party to have influence within

some specific domain”. Ability, therefore, would be the only of the three concepts,

besides integrity and benevolence, that can be shaped, obtained or influenced in a

transactional or transitive way, e.g. by training, as opposed to integrity which can only

be influenced in a transformational or intransitive way. Intransitive aspects would be

those that largely rely on individuals’ valuation and perception of the importance of

actions or values, in relation to their own personal value and belief system.

The attempt to clarify the extent to which ability could be regarded as a purely affective

or cognitive concept in relation to HROs would exceed this study, but this should be

noted for future activities. The model in diagram 5 should provoke rethinking and/or

reframing the conventional modelling of ability, benevolence and integrity being

antecedents of trust. The clarification of those concepts of trust and distrust, or mistrust

on one side, and the concepts of confidence and criticism on the other side is

considered necessary.

On the next page, the model of Conchie and Donald (2008) on safety specific

functional and dysfunctional trust and distrust has been amended as a result of this

study. It highlights the importance to integrate the cognitive-based dimensions of

confidence and sound criticism.

The coexistence between trust and distrust (Conchie et al., 2008; Burns et al., 2006;

Lewicki, et al., 1998, in Schoorman, et al. 2007) has been visualised as the

coexistence between confidence and sound criticism. The latter is also thought to

coexist with distrust.

47

Also highlighted were the affective and cognitive bases of these concepts, with respect

to their manageability and transitivity. Dotted lines indicate and connect simultaneously

possible attitudes.

Mayer, et al. (1995) antecedents of trust are still considered valid, but supposed to

work as antecedents for confidence and trust alike. The logical counterpart of

confidence is regarded as ‘sound criticism’ a constructive form of questioning the status

quo.

Trust and confidence are considered mutually exclusive, as Bhattacharya et al. (1998)

stated (see chapter 2) “trust cannot exist in an environment of certainty; if it did, it

would do so trivially.“ The other concepts of distrust and sound criticism, an adoption

from Hale’s (2000) ‘creative mistrust’ can coexist with either trust or confidence and is

considered part of an open and trustful safety culture.

48

Diagram 5.2. Adapted model from Conchie and Donald (2008) (The original model is accesible in appendix 3 for reference)

AFF

ECTI

VE B

ASE

D

not m

anag

eabl

e,

intra

nsiti

ve

CO

GN

ITIV

E B

ASE

D

man

agea

ble,

tran

sitiv

e

Dis

trus

t (lo

w-h

igh)

Trus

t (lo

w-h

igh)

Dys

func

tiona

l -

Red

uced

per

sona

l re

spon

sibi

lity

for s

afet

y -

Und

etec

ted

mis

take

s

Dys

func

tiona

l -

Sab

otag

e/ R

even

ge

-E

rror

s th

roug

h re

duce

d at

tent

ion

to w

ork

task

s

Func

tiona

l -

Ope

n co

mm

unic

atio

n -

Red

uced

risk

per

cept

ion

(phy

sica

l/psy

chol

ogic

al)

Func

tiona

l -

Mon

itorin

g/ch

ecki

ng

-H

igh

leve

l of m

aint

enan

ce/

safe

equ

ipm

ent

Con

fiden

ce

(low

-hig

h)

Soun

d C

ritic

ism

(lo

w-h

igh)

Safe

ty B

ehav

iour

s

Safe

ty-S

peci

fic

Trus

t R

elat

ions

hips

Safe

ty

Spec

ific

Act

ion

Bia

s

dotte

d lin

es =

coe

xist

ence

do

tted

lines

and

roun

d sh

apes

add

ed

Saf

ety

perfo

rman

ce o

utco

mes

om

itted

ANTE

CEDE

NTS

ANTE

CEDE

NTS

49

5.3 QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

Another suggestion for further research addresses the trustor’s trade off between

potential gain and the potential loss. Trust would, logically, only be exerted if

By doing so, individuals still expose themselves to vulnerability and risk as trust is by

definition only exerted in the absence of certainty. Thus trusting behaviour is a -

potentially - cooperative act of balancing personal risk versus a greater goal or benefit.

A similar aspect of trading off by deliberation in an uncertain situation outside the full

control of an actor is found in game theory, e.g. the prisoners’ dilemma, where purely

calculative consideration is overridden by perceptions and beliefs of another party’s

preference, outside of the actors’ sphere of influence. Profound research might include

cooperative, asymmetric, altruistic and discrete aspects of game theory. This could be

amended by asking which peer-to-peer effects would be associated with or influencing

the act of reporting safety relevant issues of oneself, or a peer?

Such relationship between game theory and trusting behaviour has neither been found

in literature on HROs nor on trust in general, although the themes strongly provoke

parallel associations.

Another open question relates to the power of deliberation in exerting trusting

behaviour: Do people generally apply a more cognitive or a more affective approach in

power deliberation, what stimulates certain preferences?

Better knowledge on these aspects could potentially contribute to the way in which

intraorganisational trust among peers and between hierarchies could be shaped,

strengthened, in order to ‘lubricate’ organisational processes and team building in

HROs.

The balance between personal trust and authoritative, respectively hierarchical

relations within organisations, a prominent and prominently publicly discussed topic

provokes another question:

How far does the lowered risk perception resulting from long-term personal relations

within an organisation influence the risk perceptions in other work-related risks? Is

there a positive correlation in such way that risk-taking attitudes will be encouraged and

sound criticism, ‘chronic unease’ (Reason, 1997) falls short? Such research would

potential gain

risk ≥ 1

50

have to deal with issues of complacency, control, establishing differentiation between

affective and cognitive forms of trust, fostering an open culture. Potentially, sound

criticism could be seen as building the bridge between personal trust and

intraorganisational confidence, a seemingly perfect and healthy couple.

Many recommendations regarding the change of organisational culture towards a

learning, safe, or just culture by implementing or changing certain elements thereof

have been drawn from existing models by ICAO, IAEA and other transnational

agencies, frequently employing Edgard Schein’s model of organisational culture.

A critical view needs to be shed on the transferability of such models and findings

between various industries dealing with different operating environments, urgencies,

and, most importantly, subjects. In aircraft maintenance decisions are rarely taken

under unavoidable time pressure, mostly standardised and clearly configured objects

are dealt with, unlike e.g. in paramedics or fire fighting, when operating under high

uncertainty and extreme urgency.

This is different in aviation, emergencies set aside. Robust procedural frameworks are

prescribed and surveyed by regulators. This is justified by the nature of operations and,

partially, high division and diversification of safety critical labour, operational pressure

and shiftwork in aircraft maintenance. The major focus in this area should therefore be

directed at management’s responsibility and their interactions with operators on the

shop floor across hierarchical boundaries. Scarcity of literature dealing with the

transferability of findings between industries indicates the need for further research in

this area.

5.4 LIMITATIONS OF THE CURRENT RESEARCH

In the process of this research, some constraints and limitations have surfaced, partly

on the consistency and validity of this study, and partly with respect to the

transferability of findings to other settings.

1. Mandatory SMSs are young in the present form in aviation, many paradigms at

once have recently shifted and are not settled yet. Greater acceptance within the

entire workforce will increase over time, allowing for greater long-term validity,

predictability and reliability of data through longitudinal studies.

2. For the depth of research, this study has been restricted to a very narrow band of

national culture and therefore results do not claim greater validity beyond

qualitative indication. Studies beyond German speaking Switzerland would certainly

add greater breadth and predictability of results.

51

3. This study has also been limited to a small part of the population in question,

broader sampling in greater numbers, strata, and demographic spread should add

to the quality of data.

4. A big question remains about the transferability of past studies onto other High-

Reliability industries due to extreme variations in operational, environmental and

organisational settings.

52

CHAPTER 6: RECOMMENDATIONS & CONCLUSION

6.1 RECOMMENDATIONS

Practical implications of this study on the manageability of trust within HROs can be

summarised as below. First a word of caution: This piece of research has been

compiled respecting latest research in literature, established and acknowledged

assumptions in organisational research over the last few decades and been based on a

small sample from Swiss Aircraft Maintenance Organisations. However, the results of

this qualitative study could inform the improvement and development of trust at a time

when the full operation of SMS by EASA requirements is just three months old.

The major underlining notion is: trust cannot be engineered into an organisation, trust is

personal. You cannot buy or delegate it. The good news: managers can strongly

influence and build factors that do support the growth of trust – with a caveat: trust and

safety go well together only when balanced by a culture of open communication,

accepting, even inviting criticism and questioning of the status quo (see Reason, 1997;

Burns and Flin, 2004; Schoorman et al., 2007). Again and again, until nobody is afraid

to speak up or stop an operation, because management encourages, or even rewards

such behaviour.

What can be managed, engineered, is confidence and a framework that allows for

sound criticism and rewards inputs. This will, on the longer run, support but not by itself

build trust.

So, here is what you can do:

1. Be aware of how and what you promise and do

Actions speak more than a thousand words, results even more. Everyone

wants to see results of what has been promised.3

Hudson’s (2001) ‘walk the talk’ dimensions scored among the highest in the

questionnaire and has been mentioned in the interviews. ‘Walk the talk’ means

producing results as well as conform to the role model that is implied. Caution not

to demand for or promise unrealistic things; people feel cheated if it is not

practised what is preached. [1 j), 2 b)] 4

3 The bold print is what would be published to managers, the regular font is to back and explain the recommendations. 4 the numbers, like [1j)] refer to the open coded interview results in the appendix

53

2. Be clear about your communication

You communicate with words, symbols, gestures, mimic. Everyone will

notice discrepancies between explicitly and implicitly communicated

messages. Even if not consciously noted, it will create distrust. Employees

need clear signals from leadership: values and purpose.

The congruence of implicit and explicit communication was stressed out in

responses. Opinion is that presence alone is a form of communication, along with

the role function of management. Establishing a common language is part of

organisational culture and supports good flow and understanding of messages.

Procedural safety includes clarity about specific purpose. [1b) 2g) 2f) 3a) 3f)]

Value congruence, low ambiguity and explicit culture scored very high in the

survey.

3. Be Fair and firm

Decisions need to be transparent, consistent and well-grounded, procedural

safety and justice warrant for integrity, benevolence is the weakest

contributor to trust.

Procedural safety and fairness scored in the highest group in the survey. Just

culture and fairness go hand in hand and all employees, not only shop staff need to

be subject to the same standards and regulations. Teams need to be composed

not based on measures of personal preferences, but based on competence and

optimal ‘friction’ and wariness. ([2e) 2j) 3i)]

4. Be clear about values, give everyone a chance to identify with the goals and

values of your company. Communicate and - most importantly - live those

values in every moment of your life.

By establishing a sense of community and communalities, shared goals and values

and communicating those, everyone has a chance to participate. In this case there

is little ambiguity about what is going on and where it is going to. This congruence

ensures people do not feel left out, partly supported by proximity and good

communication. [1b) 1c) 2b) 2c)] Associated questionnaire items scored high to

moderately positive: value congruence, low ambiguity, explicit culture.

5. Know your employees, take the time to listen, hear, understand and respond,

everyone has a sense of affection for those people that are close.

Management proximity did not score very high but still positive. Interviewees,

however, stressed these factors very often. Proximity and presence replaces many

54

other institutional forms of communication, gives clearer pictures of situations. [2c)

3a) 3b) 3c) 3d) 3j)]

6. Put only the most capable persons for the job in their positions, perceived

inability can seriously harm your performance and motivation.

Commitment, low ambiguity and authenticity scored positively. No one can be the

best in his/her subject, particularly in a management role. But it is necessary to be

guided by persons who can admit to mistakes, limits of knowledge and capabilities

and radiate understanding. [ 1a) 2j) 3i)]

7. You can ‘lubricate’ your governance and safety performance by taking good

care in composing teams, being happy about criticism, instability, and

conflicts. People only do that because they engage and trust!

Trust can fill gaps between cognitive understanding and role insecurity.

Consistency, fairness and frequent feedback, including the willingness to receive

personal feedback, support reciprocal trust. [1l) 2j) 3e)] Apart from fairness,

management commitment evokes the perception of integrity, confidence and ability,

referring to the survey.

8. Know the difference between trust and confidence

In personal relations: trust or verify!

In functional safety oriented relations: trust and verify!

In a catchy wording, this diction is picked up, referring to mutual exclusivity of

affective trust and confidence, not to be confused with trusting behaviour that

includes the readiness to accept criticism. Survey results suggest strong relations

to both, confidence and sound criticism, which are not mutually exclusive. The need

to differentiate between affective and cognitive aspects of trust is reflected in the

interviews by the ‘qualified fairness’ model, i.e. reward for cooperative behaviour

and by a general awareness of interpersonal synergies, e.g. in team composition.

[ 1a) 1c) 3i)]

You might want to sit with your employees when they have training, it will not

hurt and give you and your staff a sense of sharing, sitting in the same boat and

having something in common – striving for safety! [ 2d) 2e) 2k)]

55

6.2 CONCLUSION

The manageability of trust as pivotal supporting element of a Safety Management

System has been investigated, based on previous academic and empirical studies that

confirm this role and importance in increasing safety performance in HROs.

A mixed method approach was applied to identify key themes by interviewing

practitioners, subsequently deducting key variables to inform a survey questionnaire

that was administered with German speaking Swiss aircraft maintenance staff.

The resulting findings confirm the notion that the formation and improvement of trust

can be enhanced indirectly by supporting certain antecedents, attributes and

organisational factors. On the other side, trust cannot be managed, or engineered into

an organisation directly due to its multifaceted nature comprising of affective and

cognitive antecedents.

The parallel existence of trust and mistrust has triggered the question about confidence

and criticism, which are perceived in literature as opposites, or related aspects.

Negating the synonymous existence of trust and confidence, all other concepts are

seen as potentially coexistent, playing different roles within HROs. The existing model

of Conchie and Donald has been enhanced to accommodate for a differentiated view of

affective and cognitive motivators of trusting behaviour. It was also found that

clarification is needed on the nature of intention and action versus relational aspects

and judgements about the present and the past orientation of trust and confidence

motivation.

The recognized and confirmed need to support the aspects of trust, distrust, confidence

and sound criticism as valuable contributors to safety-oriented behaviour, led to

recommending eight actionable suggestions for management responding to the

research question. These suggestions include the need for a clear differentiation

between trust and confidence, role model awareness, governance, leadership,

transparency, critical questioning and fairness, to name most of those

recommendations.

This study was carried out within a fast changing environment and based on a very

small sample from a closely defined population. Further longitudinal research in a less

constrained setting could ensure higher data reliability and investigate specifically on

the transferability of findings between different geographic, industrial and professional

56

environments, peer-to-peer relations in safety reporting and correlations between game

theory and trust in deliberation processes.

57

CHAPTER 7: REFLECTION

These reflections have been noted during the process per chapter and are compiled

here.

Defining and defending the title

Defining the research subject that spurs my professional and private interest took me

several weeks’ time in going through the literature, re-defining, going back, like in an

upwards spiral title has been a very interesting and challenging process of crucial

importance to a successful and rewarding experience. Saunders’ et al (2009) has

proven as invaluable tool in that. After several weeks of literature research, I found a

niche of interest that still needed research.

Planning the project

The most robust approach seemed to use a GANTT chart for my project planning and

integration into my laptop calendar to support planning of self-employed work within the

schedule.

Introduction

A good and precise introduction to the topic seems absolutely necessary due to

specifics of the project in order to ensure that the reader is able understand the

specifics of the topic without getting bored. Repeatedly rereading, I tried to put myself

in someone else’s shoes to achieve the necessary distance. The length seems

appropriate to the complexity of the topic.

Literature review

How I could achieve enough breadth and depth in literature without missing important

contributions? Without proper research I would not have been able to read and write

critically. The right approach seemed by defining and approaching the topic in circles,

widening or narrowing the area or subtopic. Creating mindmaps proved to be an

extraordinary support in sorting through and building relations from the vast amount of

literature.

A dedicated tool for organising my electronic library turned out to be another great

feature, search and organising functionalities are invaluable.

The literature review proved to be the biggest and most difficult part for me, requiring

focus and discipline in managing, organising and summarising. I chose the most recent

literature first, referring to publications older than 10 years only if of essential

significance or validity often indicated through frequency of occurrence in referenced

58

literature.

Methodology

At first glance this chapter seemed to be more technical but I recognized that it

required deeper understanding of the philosophical aspects of research. The clear

distinction between deductive and inductive approach seemed difficult, as I perceive

this distinction as fluent, particularly as I am constantly changing my point of view,

dealing with different subjective realities. This presented some difficulties for me to

define my approach, in which my supervisor’s support proved very helpful.

Building the questionnaire certain questions arose: ‘what kind of evidence would

support the investigation? How to employ some criterion related validity in order to

ensure greater validity of results? Would that exceed the scope of a master thesis?

Interviews

After some telephone conversations with colleagues about my difficulty in finding the

topic, asking for inputs and challenging of my ideas, a better idea of how to construct

and substantiate my interview questions surfaced. I intended to ask open questions, so

I knew that I would be biased already when preparing the interview questions. Listening

and note-taking during the interviews and later transcribing have certainly added more

bias to the results. As former entrepreneur in the aviation industry and also as former

member of the executive board of an aircraft manufacturer I possess hands-on and

managerial experience. This helped me to switch views in order to look at the topic

from different angles. Despite my interest in procedural fairness only the reader will be

able to determine if I have put too much bias into this project. After the interviews, from

which I only took notes without having to transcribe and translate, let alone fiddle with a

recorder, open-coding of the interviews proved to be the most appropriate method for

me to extract the data preparing them for the next stage in the process.

Questionnaire

After a very successful Data Management class, I have been confident to tackle this

issue well. Soon I had to admit that real-life constraints provided more risks and

hindrances than anticipated. Some of the addressed companies did not respond in

time, some used ‘lame’ excuses. Finally a restaurant voucher was raffled among

participants and boosted responses. Disappointingly few, 30 complete sets of data out

of a potential 133, were returned. It remains speculative to me if the questionnaire was

too long, too complicated, or simply unattractive, to be considered for future studies.

Another learning point for future projects would be better discrimination between

variables through a different construction of the questionnaire and the underlying basic

59

assumptions. This would yield a sharper image of respondents’ bias and for a better

control of the outcomes’ validity.

Results

Satisfied with the results of the interviews, I think I fell somewhat short in building the

questionnaire. Although my bias towards the less explored factors of confidence and

sound criticism can be justified, I did not employ enough parameters to allow for

comparative analysis between those less and the better explored factors, such as

benevolence, integrity and ability in order to add validity to the outcome. There is a lot

of potential improvement and an area for future research, or solidification of my

research. I now need to work with what I have produced, within my self-produced

constraints and draw from interviews and literature for what I missed in the survey.

Discussion

A highly respected chapter that needs good preparation and knowledge of literature. I

was really looking forward to express my criticism and present some of my own ideas.

It was a very rewarding experience when reading through literature after completion of

the survey with my findings in mind: many correlations have clarified and were instantly

related to discussable items and recommendations. Establishing a mind-map for

‘washing-up’ supported this clarification.

Recommendations

As the ‘wash-up’ mindmap has helped me enormously in sorting and structuring my

findings into sensible relationships, the same it did for extracting recommendations.

Trying to put myself in the shoes of a time-stressed manager was not as difficult for me

as stepping back and changing the intellectual perspective as it turned out in a

discussion with my supervisor. Consequently, I had to revise the description about how

I concluded recommendations from findings.

To accommodate for the ‘time-stressed’, I tried to formulate the recommendations

punchier than might seem the norm in theses, but I enjoyed formulating those in the

thought-provoking way I like some HBR articles are written.

This section, in my understanding is about: ‘so, what is this whole study about?’ and

‘what’s it good for me and my company?’, a very helpful question, to be used more in

the future as it helped me to explain a few issues in way that seemed more logical to

me.

Conclusion

Apart from enhanced methodological competence and subject matter knowledge, I am

60

highly motivated to reach out further, by presenting this topic at specific industry

conferences and employing that knowledge in my next field of development as trainer

and consultant.

A key experience for me is the added value and satisfaction by first creating and then

diving into a topic of high personal interest that, at first glance, seemed to be very

complex, already occupied by research, and difficult. This opaqueness has just cleared

up during the ‘journey’. Such journeys can only be undertaken with a certain degree of

confidence. During the iterative process of browsing and following up through literature,

summarizing, correlating and reiterating the findings, a familiarity with theory has

emerged never experienced before and specific methodological and resource

management preferences solidified. Beyond growth in competency on the subject, on

methodologies, in reflective attitude, a new self-esteem emerged. I am most thankful

that I could, owing to my great hard-working and supporting wife, shift some of my

worktime to this study instead creating material income. This allowed me to cultivate

two very important aspects that I have come to recognize over the last three years

triggered by this MBA course: First: reflection is as important as action and production

and second: cherish serendipity!

I already find myself applying these tools for my next steps in business development –

and I am confident ‘it’ll work out’.

61

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APPENDICES

APPENDIX 1: INTERVIEW RESULTS OPEN CODED

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APPENDIX 2: SURVEY RESULTS IN DETAIL

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APPENDIX 3: CONCHIE AND DONALD’S (2008) MODEL OF SAFETY SPECIFIC FUNCTIONAL

AND DYSFUNCTIONAL TRUST AND DISTRUST

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APPENDIX 4: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRES, INTERNET VERSION

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