Intra-organizational trust as a determinant of job satisfaction in the public sector. A case study of the Swedish Public Employment Service

Abstract: From a managerial perspective, organizational effectiveness, whether internal or external, is of extreme importance. Therefore, management studies should investigate which phenomena need to be emphasized and safeguarded to utilize organizational effectiveness. Intra-organizational trust and job satisfaction are both defined as phenomena that are of influence on organizational effectiveness. This study will broaden and deepen existing literature and knowledge by investigating the relationship between intra-organizational trust as a determinant of job satisfaction. It will furthermore contribute to management studies in closing the research gap by applying the research to a public sector organization, a relatively understudied sector within this field of study with these particular concepts. Besides studying the relationship between intra-organizational trust and job satisfaction, this study will analyze the influence of five socio-demographic variables on job satisfaction. The Swedish Public Employment Service has functioned as the case study for this research. Data were obtained from 171 employees using a questionnaire. The data analysis, consisting of descriptive statistics and an ordinal linear regression model, showed that none of the five individual socio-demographic variables had a significant influence on job satisfaction experienced by the participants of this research. However, each of the three dimensions of intra-organizational trust appeared to positively influence the levels of job satisfaction based on the empirical data collected and analyzed for this research. The most important finding of this study is that intra-organizational trust among the Swedish Public Sector employees who participated in this research is a determinant of job satisfaction. These findings are of importance for management studies both in theory and practice.