The importance of trust in flexible working arrangements

Abstract

In recent decades, industries of most industrialised economies changed towards an increasing flexibility. To stay competitive, organizations had changed their structures, processes and working conditions as well. Therefore, the number of flexible working arrangements, which were enabled and supported by the development of novel technologies, did increase remarkable. With that development, established command and control approaches to motivation do not work anymore. Thus, trust is becoming increasingly important within organizations. But so far, trust within flexible working arrangements is still not widely understood. Thus, the aim of this work to understand this relationship and to answer the research question: Which effect does trust within organizations have on the performance of employees in flexible working arrangements? Therefore, an empirical study was carried out in the German-speaking area that did examine the relationship between flexible working arrangements, use of technologies, perceived trust and individual work performance. The results suggest that the perceived trust, more precisely trust in superior, does have a positive effect on the individual work performance. In contrast, the effect of the flexibility of working arrangements on the individual work performance is less clear. Thus, the level of flexibility was considered as a moderator of the relationship between trust and the individual work performance. The outcome of this analysis indicates that possibilities of spatial flexibility do have a positive moderation effect, whereas requirements on spatial and time flexibility do have a negative moderation effect.