If You Can't Trust, Stick to Hierarchy: Structure and Trust as Contingency Factors in Threat Assessment Contexts
Abstract
For organizations owning the responsibility to detect and respond to impending threats, and for organizations facing crisis, trust among organization members and the organization's structure represent critical considerations for expeditious and accurate threat assessment. This study explores the relationship between structure and trust in the context of organizations dealing with imminent threat. We address two questions organizational leaders interested in homeland security and threat assessment ought to consider: (1) What is the optimal organizational design to maximize trust and increase performance?, and (2) To what extent might organizational managers influence structural design and trust levels to improve their organization's response to crisis? We study trust from a contingency theory framework and hypothesize that trust levels vary depending on an organization's design. Using data from the laboratory experimentation tool ELICIT, a multiplayer simulation, we examine the effect of trust levels and organizational design on performance. We find that trust and organizational design have strong interactions and that hierarchical organizations experience performance levels well below that of flexible organizations. We offer implications for managers who are responsible for identifying and responding to threats and crises.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2012
- Accession Number
- ADA567074
Entities
People
- Edward H. Powley
- Mark E. Nissen
Organizations
- Naval Postgraduate School