Browsing by Subject "qualitative attitude approach"

The topic of this study is to explore how the senior business leaders construct their attitudes and describe the role of trust in the context of business transformations related to the company's business and organization, for example during mergers or acquisitions (M&A) and hyper-growth. The focus of the study is on attitudes constructed by these leaders and observed through their argumentation when talking about trust. These attitudes and argumentation are examined from the theoretic-methodological approach of qualitative attitude approach, offering a unique angle to trust research, widely dominated by quantitative research. The qualitative attitude approach relies on rhetorical social psychology and constructivist viewpoint, which draws attention to the socially constructed nature of argumentation when examining attitudes. In the qualitative attitude approach, attitude is seen as relationist, where attitude is viewed to be built in argumentation. Examining the argumentation of speech provides new insights into the role of trust in an organization. The research data consisted of five individual interviews of experienced corporate executives in top management positions (members of the company’s executive leadership team or the board of directors). The interviews were conducted in the spring and summer of 2019. These semi-structured interviews consisted of seven attitude prompts to which comments were requested. Five prompts addressed trust within the organization and two addressed leadership. In their speech, the interviewees formed statements and justifications to the questions and topics at hand, substantiating and negotiating their views. The study identified 20 different attitude constructs related to trust and two attitude constructs related to leadership overall. These attitudes were constructed from the classification of statements and justifications that emerged from the interview material. According to the qualitative attitude approach, analysis was conducted on two levels: through classifying and interpretative analysis. Attitudes were interpreted based on six evaluative argumentation patterns when talking about trust, forming six rhetoric versions of trust: Trust as a relational and interactional phenomenon across different organizational levels, Trust as an organizational catalyst, Trust as an outcome of multidimensional elements, Trust as an intentional act, Trust as a collective construct, and Trust-building as a leadership skill. The senior leaders formed these versions of trust from four subject positions - Trustor, Trustee, Observer and Evaluator of Trust, and Active Trust Builder. Positive, conditional, and negative justifications, subject positions, self-reflection, framing, and social influence were used as rhetoric and social resources to form attitudes related to trust. In the trust speech of senior business leaders, trust is described as an atmosphere of common trust, building material, and a bedrock of the company, that must be consciously and collectively built within organizations. Modern leadership was described as a school of fish with collective intelligence, a team jointly creating success. Trust-building needs to be contributed by the whole organization but it’s also seen as a leadership skill just like budgeting. The benefits of trust for organizations are empirically indisputable. Trust helps an organization to bear and share risks, creates psychological safety at all levels of the organization as well as supports risk-taking and decision-making in transformational situations.