6. The effects of cognition and affect based trust on organization identification

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the effects of cognition and affect-based trust on organizational identification and test whether the predictive power of these two trust dimensions differs for male and female employees. Data were collected from 161 white-collar employees of a Turkish public organization. The results of path analysis did not support the hypotheses indicating that affect and cognition-based trust positively predicted organizational identification. However, the effects of affect and cognition-based trust on identification were found to be significant after controlling the effects of demographic variables and social desirability. In multi-group path analysis, the differential effect of gender was not found to be significant. That is, the effects of affect and cognition-based trust on identification were not stronger for women and men employees respectively. Despite the insignificant effects of trust dimensions, this study demonstrated the importance of overall supervisory trust on the development of identification. In line with Social Exchange Theory, employees tend to reciprocate their supervisors’ trustworthiness by being identified with their organization. Alternatively, employees may feel identification because existence of trustworthy supervisors within the organization could help them to portray good image to both themselves and other people. Key words: Supervisory-trust, cognition-based trust, affect-based trust, identification, gender. JEL Classification: M10, M12, M54