A Comparative Study of Trust as a Knowledge Sharing Enabler and its Influence on Organisational Culture

Abstract

Measuring organisational trust gives stakeholders many indicators of their organisations. These indicators are performance, leadership, employees' satisfaction, job satisfaction, and knowledge sharing culture. In addition to that, the highest levels of organisations' trust can critically reduce conflict charges and transaction costs. This paper is the first stage of a research study that discusses the importance of trust to knowledge sharing. This paper shows to what extent culture influences organisational trust compared with the global trust index. This research adopts a model of trust with five dimensions and they are relating to knowledge sharing in an organisation; concern for employees, openness and honesty, identification, reliability, and competence. The adopted model was used to develop the global trust index. A survey of 26 different items was conducted on 135 profitable organisations in Jordan in different industries. A total of 397 questionnaires were returned in a form eligible for the analysis. The results show that the overall organisational trust index in Jordan compared with the global index is low and the difference is significant. Furthermore, all trust dimensions in Jordan have lower values than the world's trust dimensions. Locally, the openness and honesty dimension has the highest value, and the competency dimension has the lowest value. Therefore, Jordanian culture significantly affects the trust index in the country and lowers it compared with the global trust index.