Trust within Brazilian New Economy Organizations: an Empirical Investigation of Gender Effects Benchmarked on Brazilian Old Economy Organizations


Trust within Brazilian New Economy Organizations: an Empirical Investigation of Gender Effects Benchmarked on Brazilian Old Economy Organizations

Ano: 2009 | Volume: 6 | Número: 3
Autores: Marco Tulio Zanini, Edward J. Lusk, Birgitta Wolff
Autor Correspondente: Marco Tulio Zanini | [email protected]

Palavras-chave: organizational trust, gender, new economy

Resumos Cadastrados

Resumo Inglês:

It has been suggested that one of the negative aspects of the New Economy has been growing organizational
survival-risk both at the firm and the sector levels. This precarious positioning of the firm has profoundly
changed the work environment resulting in the dissolution of job-definition-boundaries, thereby raising the
intensity of work and finally affecting the level and nature of trust in the workplace. This is the starting point for
our study. Using a questionnaire developed by Gillespie, we investigated gender profiles concerning trust in
Supervisors, Peers, and Team in the New and the Old Economies for Brazilian managers. The results show
that, for the New Economy, Brazilian women are more willing to give trust to Supervisors whereas Brazilian
men expressed higher levels of trust when dealing with Team members. The Peer results are mixed. For the Old
Economy, men uniformly express higher levels of trust compared to women over all three reference groups.
Finally, for gender matched comparisons, those working in the Brazilian Old Economy firms express higher
levels of trust compared to their counterparts in the New Economy independent of gender or time worked. We
conclude by discussing the control implications of the above results.