Two Cases of Leader Trust

In this article, we present two cases of leader trust, which are based on an inductive, qualitative empirical study made in two manufacturing companies. Both companies are SMEs and are well recognized in their own business fields.

The primary data were gathered from several actors and sources: the leaders, employees, and human resources manager. The data consist of narrative material, collected through informal, open discussions (i.e., storytelling) with employees and the general manager. The themes of the interviews focused on trust, leadership style, and leader behaviour.

The secondary data is based on an empirical study which formed the second author's graduate thesis. Empirical material consists of three different kinds of data: i) 75 employee questionnaires; ii) open interview questions with the human resources manager of the case company following analysis of the questionnaires; and iii) a participant observation diary and notes written and analyzed by the researcher during the process.