Trustworthiness is a critical component of organizational success. This is particularly true of the 21st century workplace, where internal discussion of contentious issues related to climate change, racism, unionization, and other divisive topics is quickly becoming a norm. When these discussions lead to disagreement, they can break the trust that exists between staff and leaders. That loss of trust can also have a negative impact on public perceptions of an organization’s trustworthiness.

These difficulties are particularly pronounced in the museum sector. Like other cultural institutions, museums are increasingly being called upon to address broader social and environmental questions, along with contentious issues related to their own operations. As museums have traditionally thought of themselves as neutral ground, these calls pose a challenge to their very identities. They underscore the urgent need for strategies that allow museums to address contentious issues in ways that build, maintain, and restore trust between staff and leaders.

In response to this need, we’ve launched a new project called Cultures of Trust. The project is supported by the Innovation Resource Center for Human Resources, and is guided by the following question:

What are the interactions around contentious issues that facilitate, sustain, or detract from trust between museum leaders and museum staff?

To address this question, we’re drawing on two theoretical frameworks:

• Experiential Trust, which can be used to measure how trust between individuals changes over time.
• Complex Adaptive Systems, which provides a framework for understanding how individual interactions affect trust within organizations.

Over a period of two years, we’ll be working with our partners at the Association of Science and Technology Centers (ASTC) and the Association of Children’s Museums (ACM) to develop strategies for building, maintaining, and repairing trust between museum leaders and staff when contentious issues enter the workplace. Through a literature review, an analysis of news stories, and interviews with museum professionals, we’ll generate practical, actionable insights that directly apply to museum professionals’ experiences and contexts — and that also contribute to broader discussions about management and trust in nonprofit and for-profit organizations.

What Are We Doing Now?

Since launching this project, we’ve analyzed news media coverage of leader-staff disputes to identify the components of trust that most often come into play when contentious issues arise in museum workplaces, and reviewed the existing academic literature on leadership-staff trust in nonprofit organizations to identify key strategies for fostering employee trust in nonprofit organizations. Based on our findings, we refined our framework for building and maintaining trust.

Our continuing research will explore concrete actions to preserve trust in the face of disagreements over contentious issues. An upcoming series of interviews with museum professionals will help us identify strategies and develop resources for successfully building cultures of trust within museums.

Check back soon for more updates on this project!

About This Article

Cultures of Trust is supported by a grant from the Innovation Resource Center for Human Resources. To learn more about our work on trust and trustworthiness, see our “Trust 101” explainer along with blog posts on partnerships and trust-building, public trust in zoos and aquariums, and our moral motives conference

Photo courtesy of Todd Trapani