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Implicating trust in the innovation process^
In this paper, we describe the development of two new measures of innovation trust, 'trust that heard' and 'trust that benefit'. We report the findings from their use in a survey of design engineers in two large aerospace companies. We test a range of hypotheses covering different plausible roles for trust and confirm a 'main effects' model, whereby the variables predict the number of ideas suggested and the number of ideas implemented. In addition, we replicate earlier findings by Axtel et al. (2000), namely that personal and job variables predict idea suggestion, whereas organizational variables predict implementation.
The concept of trust has been used in fields as diverse as economics, sociology, management, social psychology and occupational psychology. However, despite the prevalence of the construct, trust has not previously been proposed as a predictor of individual innovation. This paper examines the role of aspects of trust in the innovation process.
Trust is usually defined as a willingness to accept vulnerability based upon having positive expectations about other people's intentions and behaviours in situations which are interdependent and/or risky (Rousseau, Sitkin, Burt, & Camerer, 1998). However, disciplinary diversity has meant that there is no universally accepted operationalization of trust. Although some view this as a limitation, others acknowledge that these differences are not only necessary, but also potentially valuable. Bigley and Pierce (1998) state that, 'efforts to incorporate existing trust perspectives under one conceptualization are likely to result in concepts that are either unreasonably complex or inordinately abstract for organizational science research purposes. In addition, attempts to force disparate approaches together may result in misapplications of previous approaches' (p. 415). They argue for a problem-centred approach in which the particular components of trust are specific to the context of study, in this case innovation. We agree. Thus, although subscribing to the broad definition above, we believe that a specific, innovation-focused operationalization is needed. Our 'local' definition of innovation trust, then, is: an expectancy of reasonable and positive reactions by others in response to individual innovation attempts. Our underlying logic is that people are more likely to make efforts to innovate (by creating ideas and helping implement them) when they hold expectancies of reasonable and positive responses by others.
Our...