Trust Issues? : An explorative study about millennials understanding of trust at work

Abstract

Through demographic change, millennials now make up the most substantial part of the workforce. This is relevant as they are also a generation faced with prejudice. This thesis aims to explore how millennial followers are looking at trust in work relationships and how they perceive to establish trust in work relationships to increase understanding. The focus of this study is on millennial followers, as leadership literature is plentiful, and most millennials are and will always be followers. We examine the millennials’ understanding of trust and explore what issues they bring up when reflecting on trust at work. This thesis argues that millennials think of trust as relying on others when thinking of healthy relationships. They prefer knowledge-based relationships over calculus- and identity-based relationships. To build trust, millennials perceive that they use both task- and relationship-based trust-building together with interactions as based to earn and evolve trust. In relationships where there are trust issues, they change their understanding of trust and stick to task-based or calculus-based relationships. This study follows an interpretivist approach with an abductive structure. For data collection, indepth interviews with 7 millennials from Sweden and Switzerland were conducted. To analyze a thematic approach to coding was employed. The emerging patterns are introduced in a thematic narrative to increase comprehensibility. The study provides insights into the millennial followers’ understanding of trust.

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