Title: Innovation and organisational trust: study of firms in Poland

Authors: Katarzyna Krot, Dagmara Lewicka

Addresses: Bialystok University of Technical, Wiejska 45 A 15-351, Poland. ' AGH University of Science and Technology, Al. Mickiewicza 30 31–059 Krakow, Poland

Abstract: Importance of trust rises in the situation when more and more potential choices are available. New trends and willingness to maintain sufficient position on the more and more competitive market make enterprises to become oriented on innovativeness improvement. In this context, it is especially important to gain a better understanding of factors influencing the successful development of firm innovations. The purpose of the article is to define the level of trust of employees on employer: as an organisation (total trust), supervisors (vertical trust) and coworkers (horizontal trust). The other intention is to identify the influence of trust on enterprises innovativeness based on survey data collected from 241 employees in Podlaski and Malopolski voivodeships. The research results showed the respondents trust their companies the most and the leaders the least. It turned out innovations are mostly influenced by trust in supervisors.

Keywords: organisational trust; vertical trust; horizontal trust; cooperation; Poland; competitive markets; innovativeness improvement; employees; employers; total trust; supervisors; co-workers; Podlaski; Malopolski; leaders; innovation; learning.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIL.2011.041224

International Journal of Innovation and Learning, 2011 Vol.10 No.1, pp.43 - 59

Published online: 26 Nov 2014 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article