ABSTRACT
Higher education institutions are in a state of flux. To remain viable, faculty and administrators need to work together through a healthy shared governance process to implement changes that reflect their institutions’ mission, market, and organizational culture, which requires trust. Trust has been shown to be a critical component of the workplace yet has remained under-researched within higher education. This gap in the literature necessitates the exploration of how trust operates amongst higher education faculty. This study explored the relationship between interpersonal and institutional trust, and whether interpersonal trust predicts institutional trust in faculty members at mid-sized universities. Eighty-nine faculty from all ranks across multiple institutions were surveyed on their trust in colleagues, deans, and their institution. Results showed significant relationships between faculty trust in colleagues and faculty trust in deans, between faculty trust in colleagues and institutional trust, and between faculty trust in deans and institutional trust. Faculty trust in colleagues and deans was determined to be a predictor of institutional trust; however, faculty rank was a higher predictor, indicating that faculty with higher rank reported less trust. Implications for these findings are discussed, with an emphasis on how administrators’ focus on trust can benefit the university.