TDNet Discover

This qualitative study will comprehensively explore and understand the characteristics or traits of senior managers and what, if any, are lacking to build trust in the workplace. Characteristics or traits are the peculiar qualities of senior managers. The study will employ the interpretive nature of constructivist grounded theory made famous by Kathy Charmaz for the theoretical framework. To reinforce the theoretical framework, theories of servant leadership, transformational leadership, ethical leadership, and a Biblical worldview will make up the conceptual framework, assist in establishing relationships amongst the data, and help with the exploratory research. Secondary data from Michiel Frederick Coetzer located at Mendely.com (Mendeley Data) will be used to analyze the answers to seven questions about servant leadership from thirty-nine managers who come from the ranks of the junior managers, middle managers, and senior managers of a construction company. Two central research questions, along with five sub-questions, will support the purpose of the study. The first research question (RQ1): What are the personal characteristics or traits needed to create the milieu that builds trust in the workplace for mid-level managers who report to senior managers? The second question (RQ2): What trust building characteristics or traits are lacking or incomplete in senior managers that cause the existing milieu in the organization? Developing assumptions about the research questions, the process of coding and re-coding, and the procedural method for the theoretical framework will aid in understanding the participants’ points of view individually, as managerial groups, and as a collective group. The results add to the body of knowledge on trust in the workplace by informing senior management of organizations to understand what it takes to build trust in the workplace but, more importantly, emanate those principles and characteristics by guiding policies and practices that will improve communication with more interactions, develop an organizational structure to build up employees to obtain personal and organizational goals, and a better culture to meld employees to meet their actual and potential abilities to manage organizational affairs better.