Trust building through discursive leadership: a communicative engagement perspective in higher education management

Abstract

This paper focuses on trust building as an organizational phenomenon, more specifically, trust building through discursive leadership from the perspective of communicative engagement. The study draws on prior trust literature and discursive leadership theory, adopting an explorative approach in seeking a deeper understanding of organizational trust building in a higher education organization. The data comprises leaders’ speeches and the field notes analyzed by the method of meaning-pattern reconstruction. The qualitative study demonstrates that by showing trustworthiness, the leader promotes an atmosphere for the organizational engagement of the followers. The main contribution is the empirical evidence supporting the confluence of theoretical models regarding perceived factors of organizational trustworthiness and collective organizational engagement in a rarely studied organizational environment. Trust as a core element of leadership appears to be a discursively developing process in higher education management. The findings imply for managerial leadership that the importance of raising the level of awareness of trustworthiness is crucial in leadership. Moreover, this study illustrates how discursive leadership may have a notable impact on the trust building process in the organization, especially in times of crisis. The context of a higher education organization highlights the need for exploring trust building through discursive in other than business-oriented organizations.