Is Feeling Trusted by Supervisor Able to Improve Work Engagement?

Abstract

This study examines the role of feeling trusted between the relationships between high-performance work systems and work engagement. Data were collected from 107 employees which work at the financial services companies in Jakarta, Indonesia. This study used structural equation modeling (SEM) in order to explore the associations between high-performance work systems and work engagement. Furthermore, Sobel Test was used to test the mediation effect from feeling trusted. This research found that high-performance work systems have positive relationship with feeling trusted and work engagement. Surprisingly, feeling trusted has negative impact to the work engagement. Last, this research revealed that feeling trusted cannot leads the high-performance work systems to improve work engagement. Despite this research conducted in multicultural country but it has paucity from cultural aspects analysis. Accordingly, future research should consider the cultural aspects to advance this form of research further. The theoretical and practical contributions will be discussed later.