Insights into trust across cultures
Insights into trust across cultures
Published 1 January, 2020
Trust is an issue that is fundamental to human relationships especially in the workplace.
Tan Hwee Hoon
Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour & Human Resources
In brief
- With globalisation, understanding trust across cultures has become more critical. Associate Professor Tan Hwee Hoon's research examines how factors of trustworthiness (ability, benevolence and integrity) vary in terms of importance in trust-building across countries and how one's general willingness to trust, also termed 'propensity to trust', affects relationship-building in 30 countries.
- Results show that ability and benevolence are not as important as integrity when people think of trust. There is also a positive relationship between uncertainty avoidance and one’s general willingness to trust. People are more likely to trust strangers in a society with many rules and regulations.
- For organisations, trust must be the foundation of all relationships. For policymakers, if you want people to take a risk, you should create structures and processes that will allow them to do so.
Trust is an important building block for organisational success, whether it is trust between managers and their subordinates or a brand and its customers. In this podcast, Associate Professor Tan Hwee Hoon from SMU’s Lee Kong Chian School of Business shares her insights into the research which examines how factors of trustworthiness – that is, ability, benevolence and integrity – vary in terms of importance in trust-building across countries; and how one’s general willingness to trust, also termed ‘propensity to trust’, affects relationship-building in different countries.
Trust is an important building block for organisational success, whether it is trust between managers and their subordinates or a brand and its customers.
Tan Hwee Hoon is an Associate Professor of Human Resources & Organisational Behaviour at SMU’s Lee Kong Chian School of Business. She has been involved in a multi-year study on trust that spans 30 countries across six continents.
In this podcast, she shares her insights into the research which examines how factors of trustworthiness – that is, ability, benevolence and integrity – vary in terms of importance in trust-building across countries; and how one’s general willingness to trust, also termed ‘propensity to trust’, affects relationship-building in different countries.