Another Look at the Effect of Organizational Structure on Employee Responses: What Is the Role of Trust?

Bureaucracy is a central component in many important debates in organization theory. First suggested as a way to efficiently manage organizations that would replace favouritism and partiality with clear, transparent rules (Weber, 1922), the growth of bureaucracy was seen to lead to the domination of ‘rational matter of factness’ (Weber, 1922; 240). Since its inception, bureaucracy has been interpreted in various ways, ranging from the extremes of a model modernist way to run organizations efficiently (Jaques, 1990) to a post-modern view of exploitation and control (Cooper & Burrell, 1988). We will not enter into the debate about the morality of bureaucracy. Our purpose is to explore the effects of this widespread structure on organizational participants.