Determining the Impact of Organizational Trust on Organizational Learning with the Mediating Role of Organizational Inertia The Case of Department of Natural Resources and Watershed Management of Isfahan Province

Organizational learning is defined as the perceptual structure of the social environment, physical environment, and social relationships of the people involved. Organizational learning is a continuous social activity between individuals in work environments that is different from the individual cognitive process (Hariharan & Vivekanand, 2018). In the future, organizations will succeed in discovering how to leverage the commitment and learning capacity of individuals at all levels of the organization. Therefore, learning has a special role in today's organizations and is a reflection of high intelligence and profitability resulting from opportunities and commitment to continuous improvement in the organization (Senge, 1990). On the other hand, trust in organizations creates a participatory atmosphere in organizations and increases trust, cooperation, and organizational cooperation. Additionally, organizational trust is an important and effective factor in leadership effectiveness, employee satisfaction, organizational performance, and commitment. Organizational trust is divided into two parts: interpersonal trust (interpersonal trust) and non-individual trust (institutional trust). Individual trust is based on interactions and is created through special communications and is divided into two types of lateral trust (trust between employees) and vertical trust (trust between employees and managers) (Fazel et al., 2011). Organizational trust is defined as the positive expectations of individuals about the competence, reliability, and well-being of members of the organization as well as the fundamental organizational trust within the organization (Ellonen et al., 2008). Organizational inertia, inflexibility, or stickiness is a topic that has long been the focus of researchers in the field of management sciences. Organizational inertia indicates the weakness of robust and reproducible structures that ensure the reliability and accountability of organizations. Therefore, the process of organizational adaptation to the environment requires that organizations overcome the organizational inertial forces that exist in an organization (Mikalef et al., 2018). Organizational inertia affects the ability of the organization to be creative and innovative in learning and solving problems. In the state of organizational inertia, organizations are in a state of stagnation in the face of environmental changes and use their past methods and techniques in the face of new issues and problems. It is obvious that to solve new problems, creativity and innovation are necessary, while organizational inertia is a strong barrier to creative methods (Sepahvand et al., 2017). Insufficient attention to the phenomenon of organizational inertia has many negative effects such as ignoring valuable information, incorrect management of organizational knowledge, attention and emphasis on current strategies of the organization and not paying attention to environmental changes over time and feeling the need for change (Ebrahimi, 2015).

The statistical population of the study consisted of managers, deputies, and experts active in the General Department of Natural Resources and Watershed Management of Isfahan Province, which was about 300 individuals. The sampling method in this study was stratified random sampling proportional to the volume. Morgan table was used to determine the sample size. The sampling accuracy was assumed to be equal to 5% and the sample size was 169 people. Data were collected using a questionnaire including 21 organizational trust questions based on Guyer and Demirdag’s questionnaire (2014), 17 organizational learning questions based on Neif’s questionnaire (2001) and 9 organizational inertia questions based on Hong et al. (2012) questionnaire. Also, a 5-point Likert scale was used to answer the questionnaire questions. In this research, content validity and construct validity methods have been used to determine to what extent the questionnaire has correctly measured the variables of the research subject. The content validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by five professors of the Department of Management, University of Isfahan, Iran. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to evaluate the construct validity. The reliability of the questionnaire was obtained using Cronbach's alpha method. Cronbach's alpha for organizational learning was 0.816, for organizational trust was 0.858, and for organizational inertia was 0.835. In this research, SPSS 24 and Amos24 software have been used for statistical analysis of data.

In organizations, organizational trust between employees and managers has decreased, which is due to the complexity of organizations and changes in customer needs. Therefore, one of the concerns of organizations, especially large organizations, is to create organizational trust between employees and managers. For employees to learn new trends, they need to create the right space organization. An environment in which people can trust each other in the organization and have effective relationships in the organization. The results showed that organizational trust has a positive and significant effect on organizational learning and the extent of this effect is higher than average. High organizational trust partially compensates for the weakness in other resources necessary to improve productivity and affects the internal and external relations of the organization by creating internal and external effects (Zahed Babalan & Karimianpour, 2015). Organizational inertia cannot mediate between the effect of organizational trust and organizational learning. Lateral trust has no effect on organizational learning and also vertical trust and institutional trust have a positive and significant effect on organizational learning and this effect is more than average. Trust between employees and groups of an organization is an important variable in maintaining the long-term stability of the organization and the health of its members (Hassanzadeh et al., 2014). Lack of trust in the CEO makes employees spend a lot of time and energy thinking about their future in the company, the possibility of being fired, or the future of the company. Conversely, trust in senior management allows employees to focus on what needs to be done (Mayer & Gavin, 2015). Institutional trust prevents opportunistic behavior and promotes participation (Hassanzadeh et al., 2014).