Responsible AI Governance and Organizational Trust: The Impact of Ethical Organizational Culture

Abstract

This study adopted a quantitative explanatory research design to explore the relationship between responsible AI governance and organizational trust and the role of ethical organizational culture in enhancing this relationship. The study was conducted on employees and managers from organizations that had implemented or were intending to implement AI-based systems in their organization's decision-making and/or operational activities. The participants were selected by systematic random sampling from the employee lists of the organizations, with every eligible employee having a known probability of selection; data collection was done using an anonymous online questionnaire, with a Likert scale ranging from 1 to 5. Measuring responsible AI governance included transparency, accountability, fairness, protecting privacy, human oversight, and addressing AI risks. The validity of the organizational trust was evaluated by the trust in the management of the organization, organizational decisions, and appropriate use of technology by employees. Ethical organizational culture was determined by ethical leadership, ethical standards, integrity, fairness, and organizational mechanisms of supporting ethical behavior. AMOS-based covariance-based structural equation modeling procedures were used for the analysis, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was employed to validate the measurement model, and the fit of the model was evaluated by chi-square/df, CFI, TLI, RMSEA, and SRMR. The results of the structural path analysis showed that the relationship between responsible AI governance and organizational trust was positive and significant, while the multi-group analysis based on high and low ethical organizational culture showed that this relationship was more significant in the high ethical organizational culture group. The study identifies strong organizational culture as the most effective approach to establishing organizational trust for AI governance, not as a technical or procedural protection.