Degree Name

Master of Arts

Document Type

Thesis

Date Created

12-2019

Department

College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Sociology, Sociology Student Work

Abstract

The goal of this research was to explore how institutional and interpersonal trust affect organizational commitment within voluntary organizations. This research focused on civic engagement and religious organizations as forms of voluntary organizations and utilized previously validated instruments as the means to collect data. The participants were obtained by a random sample of students, staff, and faculty from a mid-sized university in the Rocky Mountain Region of the United States and the data collection method was an email with a description of the project and a link to the survey. The survey responses resulted in a sample size of 189 participants. The predominant finding in this research was that interpersonal trust is a statistically significant variable with attempting to predict organizational commitment within voluntary institutions. Institutional trust had little to no significance when looking at organizational commitment within these two forms of voluntary institutions. The implications of this research have the potential to inform the institutional decisions of voluntary organizations to help aid in the retention of their voluntary labor force.

Keywords

interpersonal trust; institutional trust; organizational commitment; organizational sociology; organizational management theory; institutional sociology; institutions; voluntary organizations; religious organizations; civic organizations

Rights Statement

Copyright is held by the author.

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