Managing trust in high reliability organisations (2012, Andreas Fischbacher, Master Thesis)

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.

27
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.

32
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.

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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

38
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)
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)
trust
If there would be a financial reward for reporting I believe
it could be easier to report uncomfortable facts. (XV)
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)
soundcriticism
confidence
integrity
ability
benevolence
trust
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
2.60leadership consistency 2.61
management proximity 2.73
financial incentive 2.94
3.06

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
Diagram5.2.AdaptedmodelfromConchieandDonald(2008)
(Theoriginalmodelisaccesibleinappendix3forreference)
AFFECTIVE BASED
not manageable,
intransitive
COGNITIVE BASED
manageable, transitive
Distrust
(low-high)
Trust
(low-high)
Dysfunctional
- Reduced personal
responsibility for safety
- Undetected mistakes
Dysfunctional
- Sabotage/ Revenge
- Errors through reduced
attention to work tasks
Functional
- Open communication
- Reduced risk perception
(physical/psychological)
Functional
- Monitoring/checking
- High level of maintenance/
safe equipment
Confidence
(low-high)
Sound
Criticism
(low-high)
Safety Behaviours
Safety-Specific
Trust
Relationships
Safety
Specific
Action Bias
dotted lines = coexistence dotted lines and round shapes added Safety performance outcomes omitted
ANTECEDENTSANTECEDENTS

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

Managing trust in high reliability organisations (2012, Andreas Fischbacher, Master Thesis)

Managing trust in high reliability organisations (2012, Andreas Fischbacher, Master Thesis)

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