Chapter 2: Religion a Driver for Employees’ Trust in CEOs

The early institutional theory literature highlighted religion as a core societal institution that influences the behaviours of individuals and organisations. Yet to date, religion has remained relatively unexplored in the management and organisational theory literature. This chapter draws on the idea of homophily – similarity breeds connection to explore a peculiarly instructive case focussing on how religion might influence employees’ trust in the CEO in the Nigerian context – generally assumed to be a religious society. The qualitative study employed a multiple case study design with 40 interviewees from two private sector organisations. The study found religion to be instrumental in developing trust relationships. However, contrary to the idea of homophily, it is not religious similarities per se that influence employees’ trust in the CEOs. Instead, employees’ trust is predicated upon them attributing inherent to the CEOs. Therefore, the study provides theoretical and practical insights into how institutional logics, specifically religious logic, influence employees’ behaviours.