Abstract—This study aims to provide further information on
the topic of Malaysian workers trust towards their head of
departments. A total of 185 workers (males = 81, females = 104)
from four of the Malaysia’s government department in Kota
Kinabalu, Sabah were selected as the respondents in this study.
The respondents completed an open-ended questionnaire
regarding what are the underlying reasons that the employees
trust their head of department and how much they trust their
head of departments. The results from the thematic analysis
revealed that there are five main themes have been identified
from the generated data for workers’ basis of trust development
towards their head of department. Namely, 1) status privileges
and role; 2) competency; 3) benevolence; 4) worker - leader
relationship, and 5) head of department’s integrity. From the
above identified themes, it was found that, status privileges and
roles along with the head of department’s competency are
among the two most important aspects in the development of
trust in workers towards their head of department.
Index Terms—Trust, status privileges, competency,
benevolence, integrity and worker-leader relationship.
B. S. Chua, I. L. Aminuddin, M. Jasmine, and M. Lailawati are with
School of Psychology and Social Work, Universiti Malaysia Sabah,
Malaysia (e-mail: chuabs@ums.edu.my, lastar_ai@yahoo.co.uk).
C. C. Tan is now with ITE Kent Campus, Tuaran, Sabah, Malaysia (e-mail:
chochiew@yahoo.com.my).
Cite: Chua Bee Seok, Aminuddin I. Lastar, Tan Cho Chiew, Jasmine Adela Mutang, Lailawati Madlan, and Alfred Chan Huan Zhi, "Workers and Head of Departments: Investigating the Trust Factor," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 226-230, 2014.