The Impact of Interpersonal Trust on Group Cohesion: An empirical attestation among Scientists in R&D organizations

Abstract

Trust is the degree of confidence the individual partners have in the reliability and integrity of each other and lack of it can undermine almost any other developmental effort .In today’s world of uncertainty , interpersonal trust is an imperative concept which has to be probed inorder to reap its benefits. Interpersonal trust implicitly means that the probability that one party will perform an action that is beneficial or atleast not detrimental to us is high enough for us to consider engaging in some form of cooperation with the party. Trust is both the specific expectation that another’s action will be beneficial rather than detrimental and the generalized ability to take for granted, to take under trust, a vast array of features of the social order. The second concept discussed in this paper is group cohesion. Group cohesion refers to the member’s attraction to the group. It is the total field of forces which act on members to remain in the group and my research on the concept illuminate this verity. This study is based on primary data collected from 172 scientists working in a nationalized Research and Development organization in central Kerala .The survey conducted during the last quarter of 2015, is expected to enlighten the linkage between interpersonal trust as the predictor and group cohesion as the outcome. The realistic and the pragmatic findings outlined in this paper can be guidelines to harness, employee’s trust in turn strengthening the group leading to better response, energy and enterprise.