Merger-specific trust cues in the development of trust in new supervisors during an organizational merger: A naturally occurring quasi-experiment

Abstract

Organizational mergers and subsequent restructurings often create situations in which employees are assigned a new supervisor and they start to form a new relationship. In this study, we investigated how the development of trust in a new supervisor is affected by trust cues specific to the merger context. We conducted a quasi-experiment using three-wave longitudinal data to follow the development of trust throughout two years. About half of the participants were assigned a new supervisor between pre-merger (Time 1) and first post-merger (Time 2) measurement time points, while the remaining participants continued to work with the same supervisor. Results showed that new supervisor's outgroup membership prior to the merger was negatively related, while favorable outgroup attitudes and perceptions of top management reliability were positively related to the development of trust. These cues were important especially in the early phase of the relationship but their relative importance decreased over time.