The Role of Trust in Organizational Innovativeness: a Study of an Iranian Service Sector Organization

Today, recent evidence indicates that trust leads to innovativeness in organizations. However, so far few steps have been taken to support the claim, especially in the service sector organizations. Thus this study tries to analyze the effects of organizational trust on organizational innovativeness, particularly in the service sector. Statistical population of the research is all the employees of a great private bank in Shiraz with a sample of 164 selected employees. Measuring organizational trust was done based on three organizational trust dimensions of Ellonen et al, i.e. vertical, horizontal and institutional trust. Meanwhile, Wang and Ahmed questionnaire was adjusted to measure the organizational innovativeness in the service sector. The results showed that the impersonal trust, namely institutional trust, plays the most effective roles in creating organizational innovativeness in the service sector.