Mutual Trust Between Leader and Subordinate and Employee Outcomes

Tae-Yeol Kim,Jie Wang,Junsong Chen

doi:10.1007/s10551-016-3093-y

Abstract

Stable and enduring cooperative relationships among people are primarily based on mutual trust. However, little evidence exists about the effects of mutual trust between supervisor and subordinate on work outcomes. To understand better the dynamics of trust in supervisor–subordinate relationships, we examined how mutual trust between supervisor and subordinate is associated with work outcomes. Based on a sample of 247 subordinate–supervisor pairs, multilevel analyses revealed a positive effect of perceived mutual trust on task performance and interpersonal facilitation after controlling for trust in leader and felt trust. In addition, task performance and interpersonal facilitation increased as trust in leader and felt trust or trust in subordinate both increased.

Highlights

The concept of trust has been receiving increasing attention in organizational research in the last two decades (Balliet and Van Lange 2013; Colquitt et al 2007; Ferrin 2013; Schoorman et al 2007)
We conducted confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) to test the discriminant validity of trust in leader, felt trust, and mutual trust
The results indicated that cognitive mutual trust had a significant relationship with interpersonal facilitation ( = .10, p < .05), a partial relationship with task performance ( = .10, p < .10) after controlling for cognitive trust in leader and cognitive trust in subordinate

Summary

Introduction

The concept of trust has been receiving increasing attention in organizational research in the last two decades (Balliet and Van Lange 2013; Colquitt et al 2007; Ferrin 2013; Schoorman et al 2007). Brower et al (2009) demonstrated that trust in leader (assessed by subordinates) and trust in subordinate (assessed by supervisors) jointly affect individually directed citizenship behaviors As they noted, these interaction effects of actual trust cannot assure that mutuality is perceived, and we still have little understanding of how perceived mutual trust is related to work outcomes. We expect that employees are less likely to show positive work behavior when their trust in leader is not congruent to their felt trust If subordinates trust their supervisors but don’t feel trusted, they may think their good wills are not appropriately reciprocated, and become reluctant to exert a high amount of energy and effort, according to the norm of reciprocity (Gouldner 1960). We hypothesize: Hypothesis 3b Task performance and interpersonal facilitation will increase as trust in subordinate increases toward trust in leader and will decrease as trust in subordinate exceeds trust in leader

Method Sample and Procedure

Results

15. Interpersonal facilitation