TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Meier, Stephan
AU  - Stephenson, Matthew
        TI  - Culture of Trust and Division of Labor
        PY  - 2015/Apr/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 8974
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp8974
        AB  - Firms exhibit heterogeneity in size, productivity, and internal structure, and this is true even within the same industry. It has been thought since the time of Adam Smith that a firm's internal structure affects its productivity through the channel of gains from specialization. Our paper provides evidence of a link between an organization's culture – specifically the trust environment – and its internal structure.
We show experimentally that exogenously imposed culture endogenously leads to variation in organizational form. We prime trust using past performance from a pilot study and demonstrate that the level of trust within an organization affects division of labor and consequently organizational productivity. This evidence is consistent with a cross-country link between trust and the division of labor that we observe in data from the European Social Survey. Our results point to a mechanism that can help explain existing results on the connection between generalized trust and growth. It also points to an important determinant of a firm's internal structure: corporate culture (of trust).
        KW  - organizational structure
KW  - division of labor
KW  - trust
        ER  -