The Effect of Managers' Trust in Subordinate on Entrepreneurial Intention: A Research on SMEs

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to determine the entrepreneurial intention and trust levels of the individuals' who have conducted entrepreneurship activities before and of SMEs' still connected to this activity towards subordinates, determine whether there is a significant relationship between these levels and if there is, investigate the effect of the manager's trust to subordinate on the entrepreneurial intention and determine the roles of gender and entrepreneurial training on this effect. In this context, data has been obtained from 304 SME managers via survey method. The obtained data has been processed with SPSS 20.0 program and as a result of the analyzes performed, a positive relationship has been found between the entrepreneurial intentions of SME managers and trust to subordinates and the dimensions thereof; it has been determined that the increase in the trust to employees for troubleshooting and the increase in the trust to employees for the achievement of organizational tasks have affected the managers' entrepreneurial intention positively. However, it has also been found that gender and entrepreneurial training cause a difference on the relationship between the trust to subordinate and entrepreneurial intention. It has been determined that it is sufficient for male managers to see that subordinates can solve problems in order to increase entrepreneurial intention and it has been determined that, for female managers, subordinates' solving problems do not have a meaningful effect and subordinates' successfully running the organizational tasks is sufficient for the entrepreneurial intention. However, for SME managers with entrepreneurial training, it has been found that the subordinates' successfully running organizational tasks is an important factor for the continuance of entrepreneurship and for the SME managers who has not received entrepreneurial training, it has been found that the subordinates' capability for troubleshooting and trust to the subordinates' decisions are more significant.