Management Trustworthiness Research Articles

Examining the Relationship Between Managerial Trustworthiness Behaviors of Primary School Principals and Teachers' Job Satisfaction

Examining the Relationship Between Managerial Trustworthiness Behaviors of Primary School Principals and Teachers' Job Satisfaction

How does fairness promote innovative behavior in organizational change?: The importance of social context

AbstractThis study examined how and when employee perceptions of change fairness increase their engagement in innovative behavior during organizational change. Drawing upon fairness heuristic theory, we suggest that change fairness plays a pivotal role as a key heuristic about trustworthiness of leaders and managers in motivating employees to engage in innovative behavior. We also suggest that this change fairness effect becomes stronger or weaker depending on social contexts (change norms, change norm strength, and status differentiation) within a group. Our findings from survey data (N = 318; 35 teams) supported our hypotheses, showing that change fairness is positively related to innovative behavior and that this relationship becomes weaker when (a) group members demonstrate supportive behaviors for the planned change on average (positive change norms), (b) all group members uniformly demonstrate change‐supportive behaviors (strong change norms), and (c) group members' social status perceptions are similar (low status differentiation). We provide insights into theory development and change implementation in practice by highlighting the crucial role of fairness as a key decision heuristic about the trustworthiness of management and demonstrating how social contexts substitute the fairness effect on innovative behavior.

Does Workplace Spirituality Foster Employee Ambidexterity? Evidence from IT Employees

Incorporating spirituality into the workplace positively affects employees’ physical, psychological, mental, and spiritual well-being, hence contributing to sustainability. With this background, the objective of this study is to broaden our understanding of workplace spirituality and its association with employee ambidexterity through the theoretical lens of social exchange theory. It also examines the underlying mediational mechanism of employee perception of managerial trustworthiness and the moderating role of psychological distance A total of 384 Information Technology (IT) professionals participated in the study. Data were analyzed using Smart-PLS. It was found that workplace spirituality has a positive association with employee ambidexterity. Further, employee perception of managerial trustworthiness partially mediated the relationship between workplace spirituality and employee ambidexterity. Surprisingly, psychological distance did not moderate the relationship between workplace spirituality and employee perception of managerial trustworthiness. However, psychological distance moderated the relationship between workplace spirituality and employee ambidexterity. This study is an attempt to broaden the frontiers of workplace spirituality research, and it provides critical insights into how workplace spirituality fosters employee ambidexterity via employee perception of managerial trustworthiness. The findings also contribute to the scant research on the moderating role of psychological distance. Although studies have emphasized the need to explore the positive consequences of workplace spirituality, scant attention has been paid to its association with employee ambidexterity. To the best of our knowledge, no prior examination has been done on such a model, making our study unique and novel.

Trust rhetoric and CEO gender

AbstractThis study investigates the perceived and actual trustworthiness of female managers when using rhetoric to advertise their trustworthiness in public disclosure documents. We find that the stock market reacts more favorably to trust rhetoric if the document has been prepared under the responsibility of a female CEO rather than a male CEO. We rule out that this result could be driven by female and male CEOs talking about trust in different contexts. However, inconsistently with the notion that the trust rhetoric of women managers is more truthful than that of their male counterparts, trust rhetoric does not relate to less extensive earnings manipulation if such rhetoric stems from female CEOs compared to male CEOs. Our results thus do not confirm the popular view that higher female trustworthiness explains gender differences in accounting behavior.

Do Fairness and trustworthiness Payoff: The Effect of Organizational Fairness, Control Systems, and Pay-for-Performance, on Supervisor Trustworthiness, and Employees' In-role and Extra Role Performance with the Complementary Role of Managerial Trustworthiness

Do Fairness and trustworthiness Payoff: The Effect of Organizational Fairness, Control Systems, and Pay-for-Performance, on Supervisor Trustworthiness, and Employees' In-role and Extra Role Performance with the Complementary Role of Managerial Trustworthiness

Teaching in the “New Normal”: Thoughts and Experiences of Teachers on the Shape of the Academe

At the start of the year, the world was thrown into disarray by a pandemic. The first months of 2020 the COVID-19 or Corona Virus, which originally appeared in China last December 2019, quickly traveled to the Philippines. Locally it had its first case on March 7, 2020. While learning must continue throughout the epidemic, a mindset shift is required for an effective distant learning experience. Lecturers are gradually adapting to remote instruction, some aspects of teaching and learning cannot be recreated at home. This qualitative- descriptive research focused on thoughts and experiences of 16 teachers as they try to reorder and reorganize themselves in the academe. Constrained by the pandemic, responses were collected using the google form and themed accordingly. It used the Thematic Analysis of Braun and Clarke (2006) as a method in analysing the data. The teachers revealed empowerment, trustworthiness of officials, negation, readiness, hopefulness, time management, elusiveness, flexibility, and security shaped them in several aspects amidst this pandemic while realizing the importance of serving students with quality. Administrators, government officials, and others must evaluate how schools might recover faster, with a transformed sense of duty, a deeper knowledge and firmness of the need to bridge the gap in opportunities and ensuring that all kids have equal possibilities for a quality education. The call to exceptional service is a lifetime goal for them, and as academic frontliners with the ability to respond to pandemic issues, they must also ensure optimum safety.

Exposure to workplace bullying and negative gossip behaviors: Buffering roles of personal and contextual resources

AbstractThis study adds to business ethics research by investigating how employees' exposure to workplace bullying might spur their negative gossip behaviors, as well as how this effect might be buffered by their access to two personal resources (religiosity and innovation propensity) and two contextual resources (work meaningfulness and trust in top management). Survey data collected among Canadian‐based employees who work in the religious sector reveal that workplace bullying increases the likelihood that they spread negative rumors about other organizational members, but this effect is weaker when employees (1) can draw from their religious faith, (2) are motivated to generate innovative ideas, (3) derive meaning from their work, and (4) have confidence in the trustworthiness of top management. For management scholars and practitioners, this study thus pinpoints different resources that diminish the risk that workplace bullying infuses work environments with even more negative energy, as might occur if bullying spills over into additional, negative gossip behaviors.

Conflicts, trust toward the acquirer from emerging economies and post-acquisition cooperation intention

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of inter-group conflicts on the trust toward the acquirer and then further on cooperation intention after acquisitions in cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As), in the lens of the social classification theory. Two types of conflicts (realistic conflicts and symbolic conflicts) and a mediating mechanism (trust toward the acquirer) exhibit different effects on cooperation intention. The research further examines two moderating coping strategies (localizing management and assigning trustworthy expatriate managers) and tests their effectiveness in promoting trust toward the acquirer and increasing cooperation intention in cross-border M&As.Design/methodology/approachThe research hypotheses were empirically tested in the context of post-acquisition of Chinese companies' cross-border M&As. In total, 600 questionnaires were provided to the research participants of 37 acquired firms/units from advanced economies of 12 Chinese companies, and 209 valid questionnaires were collected (the response rate is 34.83%). Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to verify data validity and hierarchical multiple regression analyses were employed to test relational and moderating effects.FindingsThis research demonstrates that both realistic and symbolic conflicts can reduce the intention to cooperate, but the latter does not have a significant influence. The results also uncover that whether employees from acquired firms trust in their acquirers mediates the relationship between realistic conflicts and cooperation intention. Moreover, management localization (a measurement of whether local/original managers are retained with a high degree of freedom and autonomy after M&As) and trustworthiness of expatriate managers (a measurement of whether the assigned expatriate managers is trustworthy) positively moderate the relation between realistic conflicts and trust toward the acquirer. In addition, trust toward the acquirer mediates the interaction of realistic conflicts and management localization on the cooperation intention of the acquirers' employees.Originality/valueThis study examines how inter-organizational conflicts influence trust toward the acquirer and then cooperation intentions in the context of Chinese companies' M&A behavior of targets from developed countries and gain supportive evidence, which enriches the literature on the management of international M&As. By introducing two management localization and trustworthiness of expatriate managers into the model, the research deepens our knowledge of how to build trust toward the acquirer in cross-border M&As.

Managerial Trustworthiness and Buybacks

AbstractCEO trustworthiness is positively related to long-term excess returns after buyback announcements. When the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is trustworthy, statements that the stock is undervalued are more credible. CEO trustworthiness is initially measured by the extent to which people in the county where the company headquarters is located trust each other. Further, the positive impact of trustworthiness on excess returns is higher when the CEO has been a long-term resident of a high-trust county, and correspondingly, trustworthy CEOs are less likely to be accused of financial misreporting. Our conclusions are confirmed when we use alternative measures of trustworthiness such as employee trust and CEO integrity.

Recessionary actions and absence: A workplace‐level study

AbstractActions such as work restructuring and wage and employment freezes taken by organizations in response to recessions are widely assumed to decrease employees' job security and detrimentally affect perceptions of management's trustworthiness. We assess whether these effects occur and if, in turn, they affect workplace absenteeism. Using data from Britain's Workplace Employee Relations Survey 2011, we show that the effects on stress‐based absence are limited and not as predicted, but the effects on withdrawal‐based absence are strong and as predicted. Reductions in well‐being or job security's effect on well‐being did not affect absence, and while the reduction of trust perceptions' effect was to increase anxiety, anxiety did not increase but reduced absenteeism. The effects on withdrawal absence differ: those of recessionary action through job security reduce absenteeism, while those through trust perceptions increase it, both as predicted. The two effects involving trust perceptions are less pronounced when recessionary actions are accompanied by voluntary layoffs, but not by compulsory layoffs. The implications for management are that they should be more conscious of the effects on absence when planning recessionary actions, and more generally their effects on presenteeism.

Organisational Constraints in Data-driven Maintenance: a case study in the automotive industry

Technological development and innovations has been the focus of research in the field of smart maintenance, whereas there is less research regarding how maintenance organisations adapt the development. This case study focuses to understand what constraints maintenance organisations in the transition into applying more data-driven decisions in maintenance. This paper aims to emphasize the organisational challenges in data-driven maintenance, such as trustworthiness of data-driven decisions, data quality, management and competences. Through a case study at a global company in the automotive industry these challenges are highlighted and discussed through a questionnaire survey participated by 72 people and interviews with 7 people from the maintenance organisation.

Softer Lips Tell Sweeter Lies

This study investigates the perceived and actual trustworthiness and truthfulness of female managers when using rhetoric to advertise their trustworthiness in public disclosure documents. We find that the stock market reacts more favorably to trust rhetoric if the document has been prepared under the responsibility of a female CEO rather than a male CEO. We rule out that this result could be driven by female and male CEOs talking about trust in different contexts. However, inconsistently with the notion that the trust rhetoric of women managers is more truthful than that of their male counterparts, trust rhetoric does not relate to less extensive earnings manipulation if such rhetoric stems from female CEOs compared to male CEOs. Moreover, the trust rhetoric of female CEOs is not justified by a subsequent superior one-year stock performance. Our results contradict the popular notion that higher female trustworthiness or truthfulness explains gender differences in accounting behavior.

Perceptions regarding distributive justice in the South African financial service industry

Distributive justice is associated with the perceptions of an individual to the presence of equity and fairness in an organisation. The primary objective of this study is to critically assess distributive justice within the South African financial services industry. A quantitative research design was employed. Non-probability sampling was used and 436 usable questionnaires were returned. The empirical results revealed that trustworthiness of management, extrinsic rewards and organisational climate have positive influence on distributive justice, while employee engagement and two-way communication are founded to have no significant influence on distributive justice. Furthermore, distributive justice had a positive influence on organisational citizenship behaviour and reputable employee retention in the financial services industry.

The causal effects of referential vs ideological justification of change

Purpose This paper details an experimental study (n=197) that explores how different types of managerial change justifications affect employees’ reactions. The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of managerial justification of a controversial decision in referential terms, ideological terms or a combination of the two. Design/methodology/approach A randomized controlled experiment was used applying case-based video clips to ensure vividness and realism in the experimental manipulation. Findings The results show that referential justification caused a drop in the perceived trustworthiness of management, such that it reduced employees’ perceptions of the manager’s integrity. The effect was most pronounced in participants having elevated levels of dispositional resistance to change. The drop in perceived integrity was indirectly associated with reduced intention to support the change together with adverse affective and cognitive reactions to change. Originality/value A robust test of different change justifications in a randomized, controlled setting, which also highlights the psychological mechanisms through which referential change justifications reduce follower trust. This result should help managers more readily understand the components of successful communication in organizational change.

Assessing possible outcomes regarding organisational justice in the financial services industry

Organisational justice has captured the interest of scholars in recent years since it is associated with the perceptions of an individual, to the presence of fairness in an organisation. It thus captures what an individual feel or evaluates to be, morally correct rather than viewing it to be something prescriptive. The primary objective of this study is to assess the possible outcomes regarding organisational justice within the South African financial services industry. A quantitative research design was employed. Non- probability sampling was used and 436 usable questionnaires were returned. The empirical results reveal that trustworthiness of management, intrinsic and extrinsic rewards, organisational transparency and organisational climate have positive influence on procedural-interactional justice and distributive justice, while employee engagement is founded to have no significant influence on both procedural-interactional justice and organisational distributive justice. Furthermore, both procedural-interactional justice was found to have a positive influence on both organisational citizenship behaviour and reputable employee retention, while organisational distributive justice had positive influence on organisational citizenship behaviour and reputable employee retention

Investor Reactions to Management Attributions: Revisions versus Late Filings Following Preliminary Earnings Announcements

ABSTRACT After releasing preliminary earnings, firms may encounter accounting issues that cause them to announce an earnings revision or fail to meet a filing deadline. We experimentally examine how management attributions (accepting responsibility versus denying responsibility) influence investor reactions to these adverse financial reporting events. We find that investor reactions, as measured by perceptions of management trustworthiness and investment recommendations, to earnings revisions are more favorable (unfavorable) when managers accept (deny) responsibility by attributing the revision to an internal (external) factor. In contrast, investor reactions to late filings are not influenced by these management attributions. We also find that when the announcement does not quantify the earnings revision, accepting responsibility results in more favorable perceptions of management trustworthiness but not more favorable investment recommendations. These findings provide novel insights regarding variability in the effectiveness of management attributions to explain an adverse financial reporting event and the consequences for the public interest. Data Availability: Contact the authors for data.

Organizational justice and management trustworthiness during organizational Change: Interactions of Benevolence, Integrity, and managerial approaches

Trust and justice play an important role in the process of organizational change to build dynamic capabilities for sustainable competitive advantage. This study investigated the interaction effects of management's benevolence trustworthiness and integrity trustworthiness on employees’ perception of procedural justice during innovation or organizational change. Both the scenario and the field study showed that the patterns of the interaction effects of these two components of trustworthiness are further influenced in a complementary manner by different innovation approaches. The study indicated that the relationships between benevolence trustworthiness and integrity trustworthiness are far more complex than expected and thus need more research efforts.

Misleading by Example: The Effects of a Manager’s Unfair Customer Treatment on Service Employee Performance and Perceived Managerial Trustworthiness

We explore service worker reactions to a supervisor’s fair treatment of customers (i.e., customer-directed fairness), utilizing the group-value model of fairness to formulate two distinct predictions: (1) a status cuing effect, in which employees internalize social cues from the supervisor’s behavior to determine the social value of customers, and adapting their own customer-oriented behaviors to reflect the supervisor’s cue, and (2) a character indictment effect, in which employees use customer-directed fairness to assess the trustworthiness of the supervisor’s character. Results from experimental and field data provide evidence for these dual effects and show how each ultimately affects the employee’s in-role and extra-role customer service behavior. Implications are discussed with regard to the group-value model of fairness, alternative theories of fairness, and practical applications.

The Effect of Top Management Trustworthiness on Turnover Intentions via Negative Emotions: The Moderating Role of Gender

Based on a field study (N = 303), this paper explores the differential role that perceived top management trustworthiness has on female and male employees’ negative emotions and turnover intentions in organizations. A theoretical model is established that explicates a negative indirect effect of perceived top management trustworthiness on employee turnover intentions through employee negative emotions. The results reveal that there is a negative relationship between perceived top management trustworthiness and employee negative emotions and resulting turnover intentions and that this effect is stronger for female employees than for male employees. These results demonstrate the pivotal role played by top management trustworthiness, provide an explanation for the turnover gender gap, and highlight the subjectivity in reactions to trustworthiness perceptions. The implications for organizations are discussed in line with the need for top management to positively influence employees and particularly women, to retain them in their workforce.

The Impact of Social Media Message Features on Investorss Perception of Firm Value: The Mediating Effect of Social Media Interactions

We investigate the impact of anonymous social media messages on nonprofessional investors’ judgments of firm value and perceptions of management competence and trustworthiness. In a 2 x 2 x 2 between participants experiment with 68 undergraduate accounting students and 265 participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk, we investigate the joint effect of message credibility, vividness, and valence on nonprofessional investors’ investment-related decisions. We find that the influence on valuation assessments of social media messages with higher author credibility are stronger when communicating pallid, negative news or vivid, positive news. We also find that the emotional contagion effect, as proxied by social media interaction, significantly mediates investors’ assessments of management competence and management trustworthiness relative to the blogger competence and blogger trustworthiness (hereafter: relative competence and relative trustworthiness). The measures of relative competence and trustworthiness, in turn, impact nonprofessional investors’ firm valuation judgments. The results extend the application of the emotional contagion effects on social media (Kramer et al. 2014) to investment-related decisions and hold implications for publicly traded companies looking to mitigate their social media exposure risk through monitoring emotionally charged posts.