Confiança do empregado na organização: revalidação de instrumento de medida

Abstract

Trust related studies have proliferated in national and foreign literature. However, regarding the measurement of employee trust in the organization only one instrument was identified in the brazilian literature. Considering the possibility of refinement of this measure, this study aimed to validate the Employee s Trust Scale. The scale consists of items from the original scale and other items produced with support from the literature. The final version of the scale consisted of 61 statements in Likert format, which was answered by 554 employees of different organizations, with a minimum of six months of work. These data were subjected to factor analysis using principal axis method with oblique rotation and a factor loading greater than 0.50. The results indicate three factors that together explain 49.63 percent of variance, namely ethical components, organizational competence and opportunism, with Cronbach's alpha of 0.96, 0.92 and 0.84, respectively. The identified factor structure differs from the former scale in number of factors, although the content, at most, is present in the current composition. The content of the instrument appears to be aligned with the literature in relation to sustaining confidence in ethical bases and competence. This paper has the merit of adding the empirical contributions of the first scale to the theoretical basis of literature. It is concluded that the psychometric characteristics of the instrument recommend its use in research and even for diagnosis in the organizational context.