Trust building in a multicultural organization : Case Lassila & Tikanoja

Abstract

The importance of trust in organizations has been acknowledged in the literature and plenty of research has been conducted on trust relationships in organizations. Today’s working life is global, which means that multiculturalism has become an integral part of trust building in many organizations. However, most research on trust building in multicultural organizations has focused on highly educated professionals and trust building among people engaging in blue-collar work has been slightly neglected. The purpose of this study is to breach this research gap by exploring the trust building in a multicultural organization from the perspective of blue-collar workers.

The study was conducted as a single case study with Lassila & Tikanoja as the case organization. The focus was on the cleaning services, the other business units of Lassila & Tikanoja were excluded. This study was conducted as an explanatory case study through qualitative research methods. Data was collected through focused interviews among the employees in Lassila & Tikanoja cleaning services. The data was analyzed through categorizing.

The findings of this study suggest that the perceived trustworthiness of people, communication, appreciation for difference and propensity trust are required for trust to be built in Lassila & Tikanoja’s multicultural organization. Significance of trust in the employees’ opinion and distrust also affect the trust development. Multiculturalism was discovered to be an advantage and a challenge to trust building: being from a non-local culture is a connecting factor between employees from non-Finnish cultural backgrounds and cultural differences are a natural and interesting topic of conversation. However, misunderstandings between cultural groups, mostly caused by language barriers, can sometimes lead to “us versus them” thinking. Language barriers were also found to be the main reason for distrust. Distrust should be avoided in organizations, because it leads to suspicions or even hostility towards others and reluctance to help others at work.

The theoretical contribution of this study was to enhance understanding of trust building in a multicultural organization from the employees’ perspective. In addition, the context of blue-collar workers gives new insight to the literature on trust and multicultural organizations. This study provides guidelines for members of multicultural organizations to build trust in their everyday work. However, more research on trust building in organizations employing blue-collar employees is necessary in order to gain understanding of trust among them.