Denial and Empathy: Partners in Employee Trust Repair?

Abstract

Prior research on trust repair has focused primarily on investigating verbal responses to breaches of trust. Although consistently implicated in violations, the role of affect in the repair process has been mostly ignored. Using a scenario-based paradigm, we conducted an experimental study to examine the value of mistrusted party’s empathy, specific responses to an integrity-based violation (apology vs. denial), and nature of consequences (personal vs. organizational), as well as their interactive effects, on trust repair. Consequently, we sought to merge work on verbal responses with affect. Major findings indicated that presence of mistrusted party’s empathy functioned to repair trust better than its absence and, when coupled with a denial of culpability, produced markedly increased perceptions of violator’s integrity. These findings contribute to our understanding of how leaders influence followers through affect, informing both emotion and trust theory.

Repairing Individual Trust in Organizational Setting: The Mediating and Moderating Role of Benevolence and Competence Based

“…A number of experimental studies on the comparative effectiveness of different crisis response strategies, including apology and justification, have been conducted in crisis communication research. Except for two studies that found no significant differences between the two strategies (Bagdasarov et al, 2019;Kim & Harmon, 2014), previous experiments show that apology outperforms denial in repairing a company's image in the wake of a crisis (Cao et al, 2014;Kim et al, 2013;Schniter et al, 2013).…”

“…It plays a particularly important role in organizational trust repair, given the relative un-observability of companies' behavior (Fuoli et al, 2017). Recent studies have focused primarily on the role of apologies (Bagdasarov, Connelly, & Johnson, 2019;Ma et al, 2018). Apology and denial are two of the most fundamental and common strategies for remedying verbal trust repair strategies ( (Kim H. et al, 2004).…”

“…results related to oneself) can elicit stronger reactions than organizational consequences (i.e. results relevant to the organization as a whole than one individual) (Bagdasarov et al, 2019). The perceived cause, however, is referred to as causal ascription depending on whether the breach of confidence involves matters of competence, integrity or benevolence.…”

Leader-follower transgressions, relationship repair strategies and outcomes: A state-of-the-science review and a way forward

“…There are seven studies examining leader ethics-based transgressions (mainly dishonesty), a relationship repair strategy (apology) and outcomes together (i.e., Bagdasarov, Connelly, & Johnson, 2019;Byrne et al, 2014;Grover & Hasel, 2015;Grover et al, 2019;Radulovic et al, 2019;Zheng, van Dijke, Narayanan, & De Cremer, 2018) and one study examining a task-focused transgression (incompetence), a relationship repair strategy (penance) and outcomes (Dirks et al, 2011). The vast majority of studies have examined the direct relationship between leader follower transgressions and outcomes.…”

Employee Cynicism and Organizational Change

“…All these actions not only stimulates cynicism but also reduces the level of trust. Bagdasarov, Connelly, and Johnson (2019) argue that many employees are cynical and have no faith in the change management process. Thus, managers need to involve all the stakeholders in the change management process.…”