A trickle-down effect of subordinates’ felt trust

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between managers’ and supervisors’ trust in subordinates and team cooperation and to suggest that the downward flow of trust affects team employees. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from supervisor-employee dyads from a multisource field study. Findings Feeling trusted by managers has an indirect effect on team cooperation through feeling trusted by supervisors. In addition, there was a strong positive relation between feeling trusted by supervisors and team cooperation when team size was smaller, but a weak positive relation when team size was larger. Practical implications In order for subordinates to feel trusted, management leaders must implement actions that include: delegation and empowerment, participative decision-making and listening with respect and full attention. It is also suggested that the team size should not be too large. Originality/value We integrate theories of social exchange, social information processing, social learning and attraction-selection-attrition to test a trickle-down model of how trust in subordinates cascades down through management levels and ultimately affects team cooperation.

Employees’ online brand advocacy behaviors as a response to justice and emotion

“…Thus, H5 was supported. This high path coefficient is acceptable because this situation can be observed in both branding (Liang and Wen-Hung, 2004) and organizational behavior research (Chiu and Chiang, 2019) regarding the construct of trust.…”

Performance Monitoring, Subordinate’s Felt Trust and Ambidextrous Behavior; Toward a Conceptual Research Framework

“…In the context of the leader-subordinate relationship, trust can lead to subordinates’ positive behavior toward the leader ( Dirks and Ferrin, 2002 ) and brings exchange relationship quality and teamwork ( Chiu and Chiang, 2019 ). Being under the trust can lead to the sense of responsibility or obligation in trusted individuals to perform tasks or roles as required by trustors ( Lau et al, 2014 ).…”

“…The subordinate’s felt trust has a significant positive impact on subordinate’s psychological empowerment ( Karunarathne, 2019 ). In the context of leader and subordinate relationships, trust can lead to subordinates’ positive behavior toward the leader ( Dirks and Ferrin, 2002 ) and brings exchange relationship quality and teamwork ( Chiu and Chiang, 2019 ). If trusted partnerships are not formed and sustained, salespeople and sales managers alike can waste precious time on efforts intended to defend themselves from each other ( Strutton et al, 1993 ).…”

Job demands and burnout: The multilevel boundary conditions of collective trust and competitive pressure

“…Our approach was based on how employees are likely to report collective trust in relation to their immediate work settings (i.e., their units, teams, and work groups), which we captured as trust in management as well as management’s trust in employees. This is why we believed it made the most sense both theoretically and logically to treat collective trust at the unit level, not the organizational level, because the levels of perceived trust can vary significantly across units within the same organization (Chiu and Chiang, 2019; Clapp-Smith et al, 2009; Crossley et al, 2013). Nonetheless, we do recognize this as a limitation, and we urge future research to pay extra attention to aligning the theoretical considerations, conceptualizations, and operationalization/measurement of trust as a unit-level construct.…”