Influence and Trust in a Multinational Company

The research is concerned with the level of trust between subordinates and superiors, level of influence of different grades in the hierarchy as perceived by members of the enterprise and how the level of each is influenced by the perceived style of leadership. The sample was taken from the staff in the headquarters of a major mining company in Western Australia. It was found that trust, for both supervisory and non‐supervisory grades, was unrelated to perceived style of leadership. However, trust was significantly related to perceived influence that each hierarchical grade had on what happened in the enterprise with a more democratic style producing higher influence. This was also true for the level of influence of each grade and the perceived decision style, although it was not significant at the accepted level for senior managers and departmental heads. Hence, to increase influence on what happens in the organisation it may be necessary to introduce some form of employee participation programme such as quality circles.