The Impact of Cutbacks From a Major State Financial Crisis on Organizational Trust

Abstract

Previous research has shown that cutbacks in public spending often impact the range and quality of the public services delivered, leading to negative behaviors on the part of public servants. This article examines how sudden cutbacks caused by a major state financial crisis have an impact on interpersonal trust within a special police unit. We present the results of a longitudinal case study using a combination of qualitative methods. The lack of foreseeability and reliability caused by drastic changes resulting from cutbacks has a negative effect on members’ trust in their capacity to perform.

Keywords

cutback management organizational trust public safety special police financial crisis

Introduction

Cutbacks are a common way of overcoming a financial crisis (Kickert, 2012). They are often susceptible, however, to political calculations, leading to cuts that are not driven by actual evidence, but by opportunistic behaviors. One consequence of such a practice is the defunding of programs that are vital to citizens, but are not the focus of politicians (Pandey, 2010; Van der Voet & Van de Walle, 2018). Such actions directly affect public servants’ motivation and behavior (Kiefer et al., 2015). Thus, although some scholars claim that crises may serve as windows of opportunity for organizational change (Cepiku & Bonomi Savignon, 2012; Raudla et al., 2015), some research suggests the opposite (Schmidt et al., 2017; Wright et al., 2013). Wright et al. (2013), for example, argue that in times of austerity change motivated by financial concerns may not find the same support as changes aimed at improving organizational quality or efficiency. Yet theories have not advanced enough to develop specific hypotheses about how cutbacks affect the capabilities of agencies within public organizations (Park, 2019; Schmidt et al., 2017).

Cutbacks often impact the range and quality of services delivered, leading to a misfit between what public servants believe to be the focus of their work and the actual work that is being done. The delivery of services that are considered deficient can lead to frustration, a decrease in motivation, an increase in negative behaviors, and a decrease in positive behaviors vis-à-vis the organization (e.g., trust, loyalty, and commitment), which affect performance (Jensen et al., 2020; Pandey, 2010; Van der Voet & Vermeeren, 2017).

This study examines how cutbacks following a major political and financial crisis produce internal uncertainty and affect interpersonal trust within a public safety agency at the local level. More specifically, this study looks to identify the effects of the internal uncertainties that are generated by abrupt cutbacks in financial support and alterations in public policies (that require significant short-term adjustments in planning and operational tactics) on the interpersonal trust in the leader and in the team within a special police unit.

Raaphorst (2018) observes that a deeper understanding of how officials respond to specific kinds, conditions and consequences of uncertainties is especially important in the light of managerial improvements. We argue that the internal uncertainties created by sudden cutbacks might be very negative when they affect a public safety agency's critical resources that enable it to perform appropriately. It is expected that constant and significant adjustments at short notice, which are caused by internal uncertainty concerning support, have a negative effect on the foreseeability and reliability of operational plans and tactics, which places stress on teams’ confidence in their capacity to act precisely. The empirical evidence is drawn from a longitudinal study using qualitative methods. As many scholars have observed, little qualitative research has been conducted into organizational trust and there is a need for in-depth studies in this field (Cho & Park, 2011; Cho & Poister, 2013, 2014; Hasche et al., 2020). Research into organizational trust also lacks empirical evidence that examines whether the trust is constant over time (Lewicki et al., 2006), and previous research has indicated that trust should be examined by considering specific contexts (Colquitt et al., 2011; Schoorman et al., 2007). We expected that a more inductive research effort could shed new light on this subject and produce valuable insights. Thus, we chose a combination of ethnography, oral historiography and in-depth interviews, all of which were conducted in three distinct periods between 2012 and 2016. We assumed that the drastic changes that lead to internal uncertainty would affect the expectations of interacting partners and have negative effects on interpersonal trust. Thus, we propose five hypotheses for examining the relevance of trust as a critical organizational resource, and the effects on the interpersonal trust of internal uncertainties resulting from cutbacks in a special police unit where, according to the literature, trust is critical for coordination and performance. Assuming Gillespie (2003)'s conceptual framework, two domains of interpersonal trust behavior are observed in relation to the leader and to the team: personal trust, based on disclosure (sharing work-related or personal information of a sensitive nature), and professional trust, based on reliance (relying on another's skills, knowledge, judgments or actions, including delegating and giving autonomy). The hypotheses are tested within the context of an essential public safety service provided by the Rio de Janeiro State government in Brazil.

In the following section, we outline theoretical arguments on cutbacks and set out our hypotheses. The third section offers our methodological procedures and data analysis from the field. In the fourth section, we present our empirical findings from the analyses, which are followed by our Discussion section. The final section offers our Conclusions.

Theory and Hypotheses

Due to the complexity of budgetary cuts in public organizations, a whole line of research has focused on the impact of cuts in public spending (Ann Feldheim, 2007; Bostock et al., 2020; Cepiku & Bonomi Savignon, 2012; Jensen et al., 2020; Jick & Murray, 1982; Kiefer et al., 2015; Levine, 1979, 1980; Overmans & Noordegraaf, 2014; Pandey, 2010; Park, 2019; Raudla et al., 2015; Schmidt et al., 2017; Van der Voet & Vermeeren, 2017). Cutback Management, defined as “managing organizational change towards lower resource consumption levels and organizational activity” (Levine, 1979, p. 180), is a common strategy for dealing with moments of decline and restoring fiscal balance (Overmans & Noordegraaf, 2014). One of the most common cutbacks in public organizations is operational expenditure (Raudla et al., 2015), which affects employee benefits, training investments, career development opportunities, staffing, and resources available for performing activities properly (Kiefer et al., 2015; Van der Voet & Vermeeren, 2017). In such a scenario, cutbacks threaten public servants’ social and psychological contracts (Pandey, 2010). A breach in such a contract can lead to what Jick and Murray (1982) called Crisis Syndrome, which is characterized by reduced job satisfaction, negative behaviors, lower levels of well-being, job insecurity, and a decrease in organizational trust activities.

A change in demand, in the quality of the service delivered, in job incentives, and in job security might be a significant violation of the relational contract between employees and the organization. This not only affects the well-being and motivation of workers, but also their trust in and support for the organization, which is vital for performance (Ann Feldheim, 2007).

Public management research has observed the importance of involving employees in the processes by which public organizations implement cutbacks (Schmidt et al., 2017). Research into cutback management, however, has paid little attention to the effects of cutback implementation on employees’ attitudes and behaviors (Kiefer et al., 2015; Van der Voet & Vermeeren, 2017).

Public Management Research Into Trust

According to some studies, a factor that has proved important for effective public management is the level of managerial trust within public organizations (Cho & Park, 2011; Favero et al., 2016; Nyhan, 1999, 2000; Paul Battaglio & Condrey, 2009). According to Nyhan (2000, p. 88), trust has both an internal (organizational) and external (environmental) perspective. Whereas the external view has approached trust in government by examining the level of trust the public has in public institutions (Berg & Johansson, 2020; Destler, 2017), the former view has received significantly less attention. The internal perspective focuses on interpersonal trust within public organizations and its effects on organizational performance (Campbell & Im, 2015; Cho & Park, 2011; Cho & Poister, 2013, 2014; Favero et al., 2016; Hasche et al., 2020; Nyhan, 1999, 2000; Paul Battaglio & Condrey, 2009; Perry, 2004).

Previous research into public organizations has emphasized the relevance of interpersonal trust between supervisors and subordinates and among peers. In general, much of the research shows that organizations with a high degree of trust are less dependent on monitoring and hierarchical control (Cho & Poister, 2013, 2014). According to Behn (1995), when supervisors trust their subordinates, they are more willing to empower them by delegating authority, which may reduce micromanagement. Some studies (Cho & Poister, 2013, 2014) also report that people with a high level of trust in their leaders and peers are more cooperative and engage in cooperative behaviors, such as information sharing. Campbell and Im (2015) found that work-group cooperation is significantly related to trust in the organization, and trust mediates the relationship between work-group cooperation and identification with the organization. Hasche et al. (2020) recently reported that trust in vertical and horizontal relationships is intertwined and both can influence each other either positively or negatively.

Studies have confirmed the relationship between trust in the leader/supervisor and other variables, including performance. Nyhan (1999) reported a positive relationship between trust in the supervisor and affective organizational commitment across three public sector organizations. In another study, Nyhan (2000) develops a framework of trust in public organizations by considering both the antecedents and outcomes of trust in vertical relationships (subordinates’ trust in their superiors), where participation, feedback and empowerment positively affect trust, leading to higher levels of commitment and productivity. Perry (2004) reports that participation in decision-making, empowerment, credibility and feedback are predictors of trust in a supervisor, and a trusted supervisor can provide credible interpretations of organizational intent, sustain the desired value structure and promote organizational commitment. Cho and Park (2011) reported a strong relationship between trust in management and employee satisfaction and organizational commitment. Cho and Poister (2014) investigate three kinds of trust in leadership (trust in departmental leadership, trust in the leadership team, and trust in the supervisor). Their analysis confirms that several managerial practices are substantially associated with the three kinds of trust in leadership, which in turn affects teamwork and organizational performance. They found that trust in departmental leadership is directly related to performance, whereas trust in the leadership team and trust in the supervisor is more related to performance through teamwork.

Public Safety and the Critical Role of Trust Within Special Police Units

Park (2019) observes that public safety is one of the essential but costly services that have been locally delivered by governments. But despite the belief that the pressure to cutback may be lower because of its direct impact on the quality of life of citizens, in times of austerity public safety agencies have not been an exception to the need for cutbacks (Levine et al., 1981; Park, 2019).

According to the literature, special police units can be categorized as critical action organizations (CAOs) (Hannah et al., 2009, 2010). Organizations in this category engage in extreme contexts and face high levels of danger, complexity, and (external) uncertainty, which demand trust among their members to operate (Hannah et al., 2009; Lindsay et al., 2011; Zanini et al., 2013). Hannah and colleagues (2009, 2010) examine the role of trust in the capacity to accept risk in extreme contexts. They analysed leadership's role in highly uncertain and complex contexts and found that the leaders’ capacity to build trust in their units is critical for performance. Both older and more recent studies dealing with special military and police units show that the main structuring elements of these teams include strong internal cohesion based on relationships of trust and proximity to the leaders (Borman et al., 1987; Colquitt et al., 2011; Fraher et al., 2017; Hannah et al., 2009; Sweeney et al., 2009; Zanini et al., 2013). Borman et al. (1987) argue that leadership plays an important role in team coordination and that team effectiveness largely depends on constant respect, a willingness to follow leaders’ orders and subordinates’ commitment to the unit's mission goals. Sweeney et al. (2009) test an interdependence model and report how leaders can develop trust in their subordinates by promoting situations of cooperative interdependence. In dealing with job routines within organizations operating in extreme contexts, such as special police units, Colquitt et al. (2011, p. 1000) observe that “more dangerous tasks related to the technical core that occur in an inherently more complex and unpredictable context” can be defined as high-reliability work contexts. We can assume that the capacity to face highly unpredictable situations and danger is related to building up and supporting the organization's technical core (Colquitt et al., 2011). The review of literature on crises made by Williams et al. (2017) notes that the capacity to anticipate and respond to adversity is relevant for resilience, and that resilience is a central attribute of such organizations (CAOs). Looking at crises as events or as the result of a process that might affect these organizations is important for understanding how they arose in the first place, noting that rare or exceptional events are often the result of an evolution of circumstances that lead to the degeneration of an organization's capabilities to act regularly and proactively.

Interpersonal Trust Within Organizations

In accordance with Mayer et al. (1995, p. 712), we define trust in our study as a construct that reflects the willingness to be vulnerable. Accordingly, calculations about trusting others are reasonably possible when the trustee can estimate the effects and the consequences of the trustor's behavior. Building upon Mayer et al. (1995), Gillespie (2003) proposed a conceptual framework designed to measure a person's willingness to be vulnerable in a relationship involving multiple domains of trusting behavior. The essential theoretical contribution of Gillespie (2003) study is the finding that trust in work relationships is predominately manifested through two distinct but associated behaviors: relying on others and disclosing personal or sensitive information to others. The association between reliance and disclosure indicates that people are typically more willing to disclose information to others whom they feel they can also rely on, and vice versa. Consequently, this two-dimensional model defines two distinct constructs: professional trust based on reliability and personal trust based on disclosure. Measurement of the disclosure focuses specifically on the willingness to share sensitive or personal information with another. In contrast, reliance is more strongly based on professional skills, competence, and demonstrated dependability, as is evidenced by the stronger association in Gillespie's study between reliance and satisfaction with performance than between disclosure and satisfaction with performance (Gillespie, 2003, p. 35).

Considering the special police team members who operate in extreme contexts, we can assume that trust in the leader and the team is the expectation, built upon past experiences, that others will fulfill their promise of acting in accordance with the bonds of mutual loyalty and trust that lead to the safety of members and an enhanced capacity to face extreme risk. The belief that, even when facing extreme risk, members will return home safely is a precondition to engaging in a high-risk activity. In extreme contexts, the issue of trust in another, or others, includes assessing the capacity to make a credible commitment to the team's safety vis-à-vis the high risks being faced. Trust is built upon the perception that the leader and team members can reliably analyse risks and choose the corresponding efforts needed to mitigate these risks. Thus, since the literature on CAOs points to the importance of trust in the leader and the team as being crucial aspects for internal cooperation and performance, we propose our first hypothesis:

H₁: Trust in the leader and in the team is critical for coordination and performance within special police units operating in extreme contexts.

There remains, however, a lack of empirical research examining whether the trust is constant in these organizations. Based on the proposed conceptual framework of Gillespie (2003), which assumes two domains of trust behavior in the leader and in the team: disclosure (personal trust) and reliance (professional trust), we formulate the following additional hypotheses:

H₂: Personal trust in the leader is lower at times of great internal uncertainty than at times of little internal uncertainty.

H₃: Professional trust in the leader is lower at times of great internal uncertainty than at times of little internal uncertainty.

H₄: Personal trust in the team is lower at times of great internal uncertainty than at times of little internal uncertainty.

H₅: Professional trust in the team is lower at times of great internal uncertainty than at times of little internal uncertainty.

Methodology

Previous literature on public management has put forward the argument that attention to cutback management seems to depend on difficult times rather than on times of relative stability (Pandey, 2010; Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2011; Schmidt et al., 2017). Since 2015, the state of Rio de Janeiro has been facing a deep economic crisis that has led to different cuts in essential services, such as police work. The deterioration of the public finances of the State of Rio de Janeiro culminated in 2016 with an official state of public financial calamity being declared (Estado do Rio de Janeiro, 2016). Since 2012, a combination of economic crises, a significant loss of the main sources of public income, and increasing state debt have severely affected the government's capacity to cover its public expenditure (Sobral, 2017). In 2013, public spending was more than 5% of public net income. From 2013 to 2016, despite government efforts to decrease public expenditure, the state's net income dropped severely to less than the public spending figure (Sobral, 2017). During this period, and despite public safety being viewed by the general public as an essential service, cutbacks in the police budget increased severely. According to the National Treasury Secretariat, a federal government agency that oversees state’ budgets, between 2015 and 2017 Rio de Janeiro was the state that most reduced its spending on public security. In this period, the area suffered a 9% reduction in spending compared with the previous period (Salomão et al., 2019). The financial situation of police agencies became very critical. From 2014 to 2015, the police agency budget was reduced by 54.6%, and by 30% between 2016 and 2017 (Rio de Janeiro State Government, 2021; Rio de Janeiro State Industry Federation, 2017). The government has cut personnel and administrative resources, and has also defunded and ended essential security programs, which affects the quality of police work and the security indicators (Carneiro, 2017). The corruption scandal crises resulted in the state governor and other state secretaries being prosecuted, which led to public security policies being interrupted and a breakdown in financial support for special police operations in large-scale daily operations against the organized crime that controlled several territories in the city.

The financial crises in Rio de Janeiro occurred in the fourth year of our longitudinal study and severely affected the organization we were investigating. This provided a unique opportunity to assess the effects of internal sources of uncertainty on trust, which is essential for understanding the specific challenges of special police units (Raaphorst, 2018). We thus sought to understand the consequences of the abrupt cutbacks in financial support and alterations in public policies on Rio de Janeiro State's special police unit. Rio de Janeiro State has historically confronted organized crime and local mafias. Specialized police units are critical public services for guaranteeing minimum standards of citizens’ safety. The study organization, Special Operations Police Battalion (Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais—BOPE), a special unit of the Rio de Janeiro State Military Police, has the role of “deterritorializing” heavily armed criminal factions that merge with civilians in densely populated areas and have substantial control over the territory. BOPE was founded in 1978 and has approximately 500 police officers who specialize in combating crime in high-risk areas. Its daily operations are high risk for its members and for civilians and criminals alike. Cutting resources to this unit has had several consequences on the state's capacity to reduce the growth in organized crime activities and the escalation of violence.

For comparison purposes, it is important to observe that police agencies differ in scope and function between Brazil and the United States. Regarding scope, while in the U.S. there are many police agencies at the municipal, county, state, and federal levels, in Brazil there are only two state-level police forces and the federal police agency. Brazilian police functions are also divided between two police agencies: the military and civil state police. The Brazilian military police are comparable to most ostensive U.S. patrol police, while Brazilian civil police is a judiciary and investigative force. The scope and responsibility of the organization we studied covers the whole of the State of Rio de Janeiro, but most of the critical events occur in the city of Rio de Janeiro, which is well known as one of the main cities in Latin America on the transnational drug trafficking routes. The studied organization is known in the country and viewed by the general public as being on the front line in the fight between organized crime and state forces. Considering the critical role of this specific police unit, therefore, it is viewed by the general public as an essential service and we viewed this choice very favorably in our analysis.

Research Procedures

In order to understand the relevance of trust and the effects of internal uncertainty on trust, we used a combination of qualitative methods in three distinct periods between 2012 and 2016. The research was carried out with the combined use of: (a) In-depth interviews (individual and group) to understand the nature of the tasks performed and the challenges faced; (b) Participant observation, using an ethnographic method to understand how the institution is organized internally, both in a concrete and symbolic way, and which factors contribute towards creating the preconditions necessary for ensuring their actions were effective; and (c) Oral historiography, which helped us reconstitute the history of the unit and the origin of the internal integration solutions. The result of historiography is presented: (1) In the oral reports of the members-descriptions of how it was before and after the cutback; and (2) In the cross-check between the verbal data collected in the interviews, the document research in official sources, and the press that confirm the veracity of the information provided verbally. The following Table 1 shows the research tasks undertaken during the three phases of the research period.

Table 1.

Research Stages.

Oral historiography, in-depth interviews, and participant observation	Data sources between July and October/2012	Data sources between March and May/2014	Data sources between August and September/2016
Interviewees
Commander and ex-commanders	7		3
Members	19		17
Former members (police)	6		5
Focus-group (4–6 people in each)	18		12
Ethnography/Participant observation (3-month period each)	16 members	16 members	16 members
Document analysis
Strategy presentations	6		3
Briefings before missions	13		5
Observations
Strategy meetings	Sporadic: 6	Sporadic: 3	Sporadic: 4
Commander meetings	Every 4–5 weeks: 7	Every 4–5 weeks: 4	Every 4–5 weeks: 3
Core-group meetings	Every week: 6	Every week: 3	Every week: 3
Participant observation in the unit (days)	56	26	22

Source: The Authors.

In the first stage (between July and October 2012), by way of in-depth interviews, we sought to confirm the relationship between trust and the capacity to cope with high risk. We conducted 32 individual interviews with members and former members of the BOPE, including the founder, who had retired in 2011, another 18 focus-group interviews with members (with between 4 and 6 members in each), and 290 h of participant observation. We used open questions and planned each interview to last 1 h 30 min to allow the interviewee to speak if they believed they had relevant information to share. Since they felt uncomfortable being recorded, we took hand-written notes of the entire content. The first stage confirmed the relevance of trust in the leader and in the team as critical elements for coordination and performance when it came to facing risk. In the second stage (between March and May 2014), we followed up on the evolution of internal arrangements with three months of ethnographic study by way of participant observation. Our goal was to understand the evolution of trust and leadership over time in relation to the renewed challenges BOPE members were dealing with because of the growth in organized crime. The role of shared leadership, as a team property, whereby leadership is distributed by empowerment and delegation among team members rather than being focused on a single designated leader (Carson et al., 2007) appears at this stage as being central to internal coordination and because of the leader's capacity for confronting extreme risks. In the third stage (between August and September 2016), we carried out a new round of qualitative research. We conducted 25 individual interviews with members and former members, and a further 12 group interviews with members. This stage was dedicated to observing the possible effects on unit members of internal uncertainty caused by cutbacks, and the consequences for their expectations and attitudes.

Data Analysis

Qualitative analysis is divided into two simultaneous processes: (1) historical analysis; and (2) anthropological analysis. At first, we analysed official documents that were issued during crisis periods, like the official gazette that is supported and managed by the government, and in which it publishes its official acts (Estado do Rio de Janeiro, 2016).In-depth interviews for analysing recent events tend to capture emotional responses and unbalanced, sometimes exaggerated, conclusions (Magendzo, 2009; Migueles & Zanini, 2018; Wierzbicka, 2010). For this reason, temporal distance has been used in history as an attempt to construct a less biased historical analysis. To reduce the impact of subjectivity on the description of recently-lived and uncertain facts and their impact on the interviewees’ descriptions of events that can distort the memory of the sequence and relevance of the facts, we adopted historiography techniques, and cross-checked the data collected during the interviews with official document analysis, press information and annotations of the timeline of the sequence of events. We also compared the description of the sequence of the facts recounted during the interviews for greater accuracy.

This comprised an analysis of official documents that, throughout 2016, provided information on alterations in budgetary allocation and public security policies, combined with analysing newspaper and television news regarding the prosecution of several state politicians and its effects. The evolution that led to a specific event being analysed by a historical method was the governor's official declaration of a state of public financial calamity in 2016 (Estado do Rio de Janeiro, 2016). When this is combined with participant observation of its impact on police operations, it becomes relevant to this paper, which uses a methodology of contemporary history (Büthe, 2002; Jackson, 2006; Rousso, 2016; Skehill, 2007). The history of the present time is a reconstitution of the facts, tensions and trends that affect people's struggle to make sense of what they have just lived through.

In using historiography, our goal was to provide empirical evidence of the growth of uncertainty as portrayed in official documents and the media at the time. Oral historiography was adopted to reconstruct the institution's history through in-depth interviews to understand the impact of external events on internal arrangements. Two trained anthropologists conducted the ethnography with participant observation over three periods (from 2012 to 2016) of three months each. The interviews were always conducted by two researchers. One exclusively took notes in the most literal way possible to keep a record of the internal structure of the narrative and ensure that the interviewee's intentions were faithfully reported. The second researcher was responsible for crosschecking and clarifying issues that emerged during the research. Both kept a fieldwork notebook with registers. Ethnography based on participant observation followed in the three research stages to obtain a deeper understanding of how these relationships were constructed over time. It was composed of different rounds of interviews with 16 members selected as the preferred informants due to the quality of their analysis. Our research team also participated as observers in several strategic, commander briefings and core-group meetings.

Common themes gradually emerged, which partly reflected the commonalities that exist with other CAOs, as described in the literature. Retired former commanders of the unit were interviewed to understand the unit's internal evolution from the original intention that led to its creation, its original mission and challenges, to its evolution over time since it began (Fraher et al., 2016). We also sought to identify any tensions and paradoxes in the discourse (Alvesson & Karreman, 2007). The evolutionary approach (described in the historical analysis) proved to be valid for context analysis because it provides evidence of the dynamic transformation of the political and institutional framework, on the one hand, and the evolution of crime, on the other, which provided support for framing the context within which the responses emerged. The evolutionary approach is not sufficient, however, for explaining the specificities of the internal development of this unit, or the features of the responses we collected. The ethnographic approach seeks to provide this link by looking at how, symbolically and materially, the solutions for a shared understanding of the situation evolve and how they materialize in artifacts and acts (Redfield, 1941), thereby creating the unit's culture and its unique way of coping with reality.

Empirical Findings

The empirical findings are divided into two main groups: (a) The critical role of trust for coordination and performance in extreme contexts; and (b) The consequences of internal uncertainty on trust. We analyse these findings below:

The Critical Role of Trust for Coordination and Performance in Extreme Contexts

Our interviews in the first stage confirm that the central roles that trust in the leader and in the team members plays is a critical factor that leads to informal coordination in the unit in critical combat situations. As an experienced sergeant, who is an operations leader, states:

For one side, the success of operations depends on being able to act precisely under combat, and for the other it's doing it with a strong commitment to the team. In operations, your teammate should cover your back. Lack of trust, or a technical incapacity or inability would jeopardize the operation and all the other members’ lives. We’re constantly watching out for those risks. Together. As a team.

Several police officers in operations made similar comments, affirming that successful operations are based on the capacity to trust the team leader and team members (professional and personal trust in the leader and in the team). Another police officer illustrates many comments in this sense: “I wouldn’t risk my life if I didn’t trust the abilities and competences of our team members (professional trust in the team), or their character (personal trust in the team). I know what I can expect from them.” Our interviews in the second stage confirm trust in the leader and in the team as a precondition for shared leadership. At the conceptual level, Day et al. (2004) examined the shared leadership process in military operations and agreed with the definition of Pearce and Conger (2003, p. 1) that it is a “dynamic, interactive influence process among individuals in groups for which the objective is to lead one another to the achievement of group or organizational goals or both.” This is in line with what we observed: shared leadership occurs in the form of a continuous ongoing cycle directed towards successful missions while ensuring maximum possible safety for both professionals and civilians. In the form of their individual knowledge, skills, and abilities, the resources of team members are initial inputs to teamwork dynamics. This perspective assumes that all individuals are influential and that the team leader and team members are important resources when it comes to facing up to complex adaptive environments. As another sergeant, who is an operations leader, states:

We use all the information we can in planning operations. Listening to those who know the territory is extremely relevant to our success. A slum is a complex system. Sharing the strategy and the operational plan with those involved and changing it if they bring new and relevant information is crucial. Once we’re on the “battleground,” there's no time to consult anyone outside. Everybody needs to know how to switch roles according to the circumstances. Anticipation, planning, and adjustments must be aligned. Experience and careful planning are important for successful adjustments.

Several police officers at different hierarchical levels made similar comments in this regard (professional trust in the leader and in the team). As the BOPE Commander says in an interview:

Although we’re a military police unit, we’re very open with each other, and leaders and team members are free to share their opinions and information (professional and personal trust in the leader and in the team). Even the lowest ranking police officer can openly contribute in the briefings before the operations because sometimes he has specific information about the battlefield or some relevant consideration regarding the locality.

Our observations also showed that consistent planning, the quality of the data used, the development of human competences for dealing with risk through intensive training in a continuous learning process, and trust that each member will behave according to what was previously agreed, are key to the unit's ability to face up to their daily high-risk operations. Trusting team members and the leader in critical situations is fundamental to accepting the risk.

The Consequences of Internal Uncertainty on Trust

The uncertainty we observed in the specific context of BOPE from August to September 2016 is of an institutional nature, related to internal disorder in the State. It refers to the difficulty of building a minimum, valid consensus among multiple actors by establishing a hierarchy of priorities and objectives. A minimum consensus would enable the negotiation of objectives and establish the ways of achieving them, giving rise to stable ways of acting. Negotiation would give rise to legitimate rules and enforcement mechanisms that would establish fixed agreements regarding the use of resources by all those involved, and their allocation. We observe an environment characterized by institutional disorder, with multiple actors interacting without knowledge of the impacts of their decisions on the whole, multiple areas for opportunism, and no feedback process or information processing mechanism, in a context of imperfect rules and the improvised allocation of resources. Some authors have identified and classified this type of uncertainty as primary and non-strategic (e.g., Sutcliffe & Zaheer, 1998), related to the actions of other agents of interaction. We observed a considerable increase in this type of internal uncertainty, which was generated by the State of Rio de Janeiro's financial crisis, when investments in public safety services were reduced. The in-depth interviews carried out in this research demonstrate that discontinuing the public security policy and interrupting the material support needed for carrying out operations have an impact not only on the short-term response capability of this public organization, but also on its long-term results, in the way that this affects its ability to guarantee the stability of the capabilities acquired by the organization. We returned to interviews to understand, in a contextualized way, why trust reduced, especially about the professionalism of the leader and the team. The results point to the following situation:

A corporal, who was an operations member, states:

There was a conflict going on between two heavily armed criminal gangs in the Rocinha slum. Its nearly 300,000 inhabitants were trying to protect themselves in their poorly built, highly vulnerable houses. We were called in to settle the situation. The bad news was that the funds we needed for fuel had not been transferred to us. There was not enough fuel to send the armoured personnel carrier to the “battlefield”.

One of the police officers said: “We cannot abandon the civilian community.” The leader faced a decision between devotion to the cause and the safety of his troops. The failure to attend the call hurts the very essence of the organization and its mission but answering the call would express insufficient concern with the safety of the unit's members. The dilemma between the civilians and the team's safety could not be solved by short-term decision-making. As the operations leader put it:

If we knew well in advance that we would need to operate in such a context without important resources, we could still try to think through the problem in a search for alternatives. We try to make our plans with the least possible dependence on a stable support. But now it's gone too far. It exceeded our response capability. The men decided to go into operation. But it left a scar on our commitment to safety and reliability.

The role of internal uncertainty in eroding the preconditions required for the adequate performance of the leaders is relevant (professional trust in the leader and in the team). A sergeant, who was another operations leader, states:

I trust my team and leader. I know who they are. There are people here who have put their own lives on the firing line to defend the lives of their colleagues. When you’re in a life-or-death situation, you end up knowing who you can and can't trust. No one here would leave a colleague lying on the floor. I saw it many times. I wouldn't go into an operation if I didn't know that (personal trust in the leader and in the team). I also trust the professionals’ ability to act correctly in the situation. But there are times when, without the resources, it's impossible to know if the professional will know how to act in the best way… Will the professional make the best decision under pressure, without resources? The risk increases a lot (professional trust in the leader and in the team).

Several police officers at different hierarchical levels made similar comments on the problem of resource scarcity. The interviews conducted during periods of acute crisis explain the negative relationship that exists between internal uncertainties, short-term policy changes, and trust, as follows:

Commander: We have a criminal map of the city. In some locations, it's necessary to act “surgically” and weaken them over time with a strategy. To produce a desirable result, we must control the use of power, plan our team's safety, monitor the best location to enter, the precise goal we want to achieve, and the right time and route to the exit. The number of areas controlled by criminals and the number of civilians in those areas exceeds our capacity. We need to plan and prioritize. In short, it's impossible to get updated information from the location, and it's impossible to ensure that the less experienced team members will know how to proceed if there are any surprises on the battleground (professional trust in the leader and in the team).

As a police officer team member says:

We need to be clear that there's a difference between appropriate adjustments and improvising. The former is important and necessary. The latter is undesirable. We also need to be clear that there's a difference between acts of operational discipline and professionalism, on the one hand, and heroism on the other. Heroic deeds increase the risks of the operation. The weaker the planning, the more likely we are to face situations that demand that we improvise. Improvisation is the ‘hero's’ playground… do I trust my team members not to resort to heroic improvisation? … No… I don't. Operational discipline is key to a safe and successful operation. I trust my mates to follow operational discipline competently. But outside of that, I can't see how they may act (professional trust in the leader and in the team).

Several police officers at different hierarchical levels made similar comments on adequate planning being positive, versus improvisation being ‘heroism’ (in a negative sense). Many argued that trust in the capacity of others to perform appropriately based on planning and mutual commitment is critical in combat situations (professional trust in the leader and in the team). Discourse analysis provides evidence of the relevance of planning, participation and responses aligned with events according to pre-defined operational tactics and operational discipline.

Discussion

This study has focused on how sudden cutbacks resulting from a major political and financial crisis produce internal uncertainty and affect interpersonal trust in the leader and in the team within a special police unit. According to the literature on this type of organization, trust is critical for coordination and performance (Hannah et al., 2009). This study presents three main findings for public management literature. First, as Raaphorst (2018) highlighted, we observed a specific type of internal uncertainty, characterized by institutional disorder and its consequences with regard to how police officers respond to those uncertainties. According to our observations, internal uncertainty that arises from sudden cutbacks, especially in personnel and public policies, jeopardizes the analytical capacity of public organizations and the capabilities of public servants. Using ethnography, we observed that uncertainty about the provision of support leads to enhanced time pressures and, consequently, to an increase in the demand for discretionary short-term decision-making, which has a negative effect on interdependent cooperative arrangements. Interdependence increases foreseeability and reliability due to the cooperative efforts made to understand and reduce risks, which are synthesized in operational plans and tactics. Continual short-term internal uncertainties increase the demand for discretionary decisions, increasing the chances of error even if the leader is capable under ordinary circumstances. Internal uncertainty jeopardizes the effectiveness of the team's technical core built up by the interdependent efforts of risk analysis and risk mitigation. This increases vulnerability by reducing reliability regarding estimates of the necessary adjustments needed between the means and the ends. It also forces a higher degree of improvisation and, consequently, of failure when anticipating and working towards mitigating risk factors. This leads to a focus that is divided between internal and external sources of uncertainty, which considerably threatens the response capability of operational units. Learning to cope with resource scarcity is the response that members found for continuing to operate. This happens, however, at the expense of the development of internal capabilities related to the unit's technical core. In this study, we observed a continuous overlapping of crises as a process and crises as an event, according to the typology of Williams et al. (2017), in which continuous internal uncertainty is a significant source of the disturbance. The coexistence of both sources of uncertainty jeopardizes the development of organizational capabilities.

Secondly, our findings are also in line with those of Hannah et al. (2009), Sweeney et al. (2009), and Lindsay et al. (2011) in with regard to public organizations operating in extreme contexts, specifically concerning special police units. We confirmed that the level of trust in a leader determines the extent to which subordinates accept the leader's influence. Like Hannah et al. (2009), we observed the critical leadership role in extreme contexts, when the leaders were facing high levels of risk and complexity. The prior trust that leaders build in their teams is critical to their subsequent performance, as we confirmed in our study. The credibility of leaders involves their subordinates perceiving their competence and good character. As a police officer says in an interview:

I trust my leader because I know him from the field. He's one of us. My trust doesn't come from the office. It comes from the battlefield. I’ve trusted him with my life many times. I never regret it. If he says: we have a new mission, here I go.

We could observe that mutual reliability (between leaders and subordinates and among team members) is critical for accepting risk and the chief element for reducing the perception of its intensity. Trust based on reliability is built up because this confirms that solutions for mutual protection work in practice. These findings led us to confirm Hypothesis 1.

Thirdly, our findings are in line with other studies which observe that cutbacks directly affect public servants’ capabilities, showing a decrease in positive behaviors that might affect performance (Jensen et al., 2020; Kiefer et al., 2015; Pandey, 2010; Van der Voet & Vermeeren, 2017). In the present study, cutbacks in operational resources, which affect the basic resources needed for performing activities, have had an impact and resulted in a decrease in organizational trust. We deepened our observation by assuming Gillespie (2003) two-dimensional model approach based on two distinct constructs: professional trust based on reliability, and personal trust based on disclosure. Our observations point to a direct and adverse relationship between internal uncertainty and professional trust in the leader and in the team. However, we observed that personal trust in the leader and in the team is not significantly affected. These findings led us to confirm Hypotheses 3 and 5 and reject Hypotheses 2 and 4.

Our study shows that the belief that the leader will make every effort to ensure reliable operations persisted throughout the longitudinal study, but that the belief that the leader can professionally ensure that the operations will lead to estimates of appropriate success reduced. As a police officer says in an interview:

I trust my teammates and my leader. We mutually support and encourage each other. We share our best and worst feelings in good times and in bad times [personal trust based on disclosure]. I know how good they are in the battlefield. But with regard to the job, we’re facing bad times now. Recently, I’ve not trusted that we can perform to the best of our ability [professional trust based on reliability]. Without reliable information for planning, and proper equipment and resources, we’re losing our capability.

Critical internal uncertainty threats the accuracy and quality of these estimates. Consequently, it not only affects the well-being and motivation of workers, but also their professional trust in the leader and in the team members’ capacity to perform, which is vital for performance (in fact, according to Gillespie's study, professional trust has a strong association with performance).

According to our findings, we confirm that reliability and predictability are fundamental elements for generating professional trust. Reliability and predictability derive from predicting the extent to which the professional will make decisions according to what has already been previously agreed upon. As a major says in an interview:

The question is not whether you’ve got money or not. The question is how much you have today and how much you’ll have tomorrow and the day after. You can find the best way to operate with certain limited resources; see what you can do in scenarios A, B, or C. What you can't do is find out at the last moment and not knowing what it's going to be like next day. Of course, effectiveness depends on the volume of the resources. With better guns and more material support, it's easier to produce better results more consistently. But you can use the best technique to overcome moments of crisis and scarcity. What's not possible is to face highly dangerous situations without any planning. The professional competence of an individual alone is not enough to get it right under these conditions … Now, if we’re in that situation too long, the planning and our training discipline will eventually weaken. If we have to work on the fly, we’ll no longer be who we are.

As the discourse of a team member that is reproduced above suggests, the introduction of short-term variables partially destroys the operational discipline that emerges from interdependent planning efforts and requires improvisation. Improvising makes way for random, individual decision-making, which negatively affects the quality and predictability of the team's ad hoc adjustments, thereby increasing risk. Naturally, when faced with combat situations, planning may fail to predict all possible events, not only because criminals strive to prevent the success of operations, but also because neither the combat context nor the tasks are fixed and predictable in advance. In this case, professional trust emerges as the perception of the capacity to minimize risks by planning missions considering all possible contingencies. This is followed by the capacity to make the best ad hoc adjustments in the field, thus minimizing the risks of unforeseeable events. Therefore, professional trust emerges as a result of foreseeability, which believes that alignment efforts are strong enough to ensure adequate results. It is in the best interests of all members to submit to what has already been agreed upon. There is a belief that through the continuous development of people, shared plans, tactics and information, the best ad hoc decisions are likely to emerge, considering the team's response capability. Team synchronicity is part of the effective response to challenges. Arbitrary decision-making threatens the coordinated responses of teams. The opposite of trust and aligned decision-making is the inability to counter the random possibilities of unforeseen decisions, which could fail. Unlike a personal trust, which is related to behavioral risks (as a lack of disclosure associated with opportunistic behaviors and lack of commitment and loyalty to other members), professional trust is related to the ability to foresee the quality of the decision-making process in relation to the greater or lesser probability of an error being committed.

In 2016 we observed that the internal uncertainty and volatility of the organizational context in which BOPE found itself inhibited the development of appropriate strategies in relation to existing support, thus increasing the need for improvisation and possible errors being committed. We observed that internal uncertainty has a negative effect on professional trust in the leader and the team, allowing us to confirm the negative impact that discontinuing public policies has on the installed capacity in that organization. Therefore, it seems reasonable to hypothesize that the discontinuation of public policies and sudden cutbacks negatively affect the installed capacity in this special police unit.

Conclusion

This study captures the causal effect of a sudden cutback on intra-organizational trust, resulting in four relevant contributions. First, it contributes to studies about the effects of cutbacks on the capabilities of critical public organizations. Internal uncertainty that arises from cutbacks in personnel and in public policies jeopardizes the capabilities of employees within these public organizations. Internal uncertainty, in the form of short-term financial scarcity and sudden changes, negatively affects the process of learning and responding to external sources of adversity. This leads to a focus that is divided between internal and external sources of uncertainty, which acts as a considerable threat to the response capability of special police operational units.

In this study, we observed a continuous overlapping of crises as a process and crises as an event, according to the typology of Williams et al. (2017), in which continuous internal uncertainty is a significant source of the disturbance. We observed that internal uncertainty generates a context that exceeds the capacity of adequate planning, thus increasing the need for improvisation and errors being committed that cannot be mitigated by adequate internal integration mechanisms. Arbitrary decision-making has more room to develop in this context, which has a negative effect on safety and reliability.

Second, it contributes to the literature on organizational trust. Our research findings point to reliability and predictability as key elements in promoting professional trust, which derives from the ability to predict how individuals will make decisions in accordance with their exercise in shared planning. Predictability stems not from the possibility of anticipating all future situations, but from the belief that all team members are prepared to act in accordance with previously defined goals and tactics. In this sense, we observed that professional trust derives from ensuring that the best ad hoc decisions are taken by developing people. The opposite of this is the inability to counteract the unforeseen possibilities of randomly taken decisions.

Third, the paper contributes by addressing the importance of informal mechanisms for managing special police units as public organizations operating in extreme contexts (CAOs). Based on our field observations, we identified that the exercise of shared leadership and the development of self-disciplined teams for solving problems with some degree of autonomy are critical for better coordination in extreme contexts. Our results confirm the relationship between trust and the willingness to accept high risk. Observation also demonstrates that shared leadership reduces information asymmetry and increases the perception of transparency, which positively affects the reliability of a team's operational tactics. Reliable information and participative planning strongly reduce the gap between conception and execution, and the information asymmetry between leaders and the led, thereby increasing the likelihood of trust being generated.

Fourth, taking the time perspective into account, this study adds a contribution as a qualitative case study that includes rich empirical descriptions of how cutbacks resulting from a major political and financial crisis lead to internal uncertainty and affect trust within a public organization. Previous research in public management studies of intra-organizational trust are mostly quantitative, and there is a call for qualitative research (Cho & Poister, 2013, 2014; Hasche et al., 2020).

Limitations and Suggestions for Further Research

This study has several limitations, which call for future investigation. First, one should be cautious about generalizing as the data were taken from just one public organization in the state of Rio de Janeiro. Second, despite the study capturing the ‘causal’ effect of sudden cutbacks on trust, and the literature points to the relationship between trust and team/unit performance (e.g., Cho & Poister, 2014), a more robust research design is required to establish a causal relationship between trust and performance. Finally, this research is limited to the proposed conceptual framework of Gillespie (2003). Exploring other trust dimensions may provide public managers with evidence as to which type(s) of trust need to be prioritized under cutbacks resulting from a financial crisis. Some researchers (Cho & Lee, 2011; Cho & Poister, 2013, 2014) agree that the positive effects of intra-organizational trust are not limited to inside public organizations but are also regarded as an important managerial resource for building trust with other organizations and among citizens (Cho & Lee, 2011).

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Marco Tulio Zanini

Author Biographies

Marco Tulio Zanini is a Senior Research Professor of Organizational Behavior/SHR Management at the Brazilian School of Public and Business Administration, Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV), Brazil. Research interests focus on the overlap between strategy, organizational behavior and performance, with particular attention to interpersonal trust.

Carmen Migueles is a Senior Research Professor of Organizational Behavior/Corporate Culture at the Brazilian School of Public and Business Administration, Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV), Brazil. Research interests focus on the relationship between culture and productivity, and organizational diversity.

Juliana Carvalho is a PhD student and research assistant at the Brazilian School of Public and Business Administration (EBAPE)/Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Research interests focus on leadership and organizational diversity.

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