Sustaining organizational trust among restaurant employees after the crisis: Insights from a developing country

Abstract

Sustaining trustful employee-organization relationships and improving job satisfaction are always significant challenges for managers, especially in the restaurant industry. For the purpose of fathoming the value of trust, an analytical framework examining organizational trust as an explanatory mechanism through which various organizational conditions influence job satisfaction has been proposed based on the guidance of the social exchange theory. Analysis of survey data from 302 restaurant employees in a celebrated tourist destination of Vietnam have shown both direct and indirect impacts of transformational leadership, internal communication, and career growth on job satisfaction via enhanced trust. Together these main findings have contributed to academic research on employees’ attitudes within the organization and provided a blueprint for creating a congenial working condition for employees in restaurant businesses, which results in employee trust towards their organizations and job satisfaction.