Being trusted: How team generational age diversity promotes and undermines trust in cross‐boundary relationships

• Date: 01 April 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2045
• Author: Michele Williams
• Published date: 01 April 2016

Being trusted: How team generational age diversity

promotes and undermines trust in cross-boundary

relationships

MICHELE WILLIAMS*

Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, U.S.A.

Summary We examine how demographic context influences the trust that boundary spanners experience in their dyadic

relationships with clients. Because of the salience of age as a demographic characteristic as well as the

increasing prevalence of age diversity and intergenerational conflict in the workplace, we focus on team

age diversity as a demographic social context that affects trust between boundary spanners and their clients.

Using social categorization theory and theories of social capital, we develop and test our contextual argument

that a boundary spanner’s experience of being trusted is influenced by the social categorization processes that

occur in dyadic interactions with a specific client and, simultaneously, by similar social categorization

processes that influence the degree to which the client team as a whole serves as a cooperative resource for

demographically similar versus dissimilar boundary spanner–client dyads. Using a sample of 168 senior

boundary spanners from the consulting industry, we find that generational diversity among client team

members from a client organization undermines the perception of being trusted within homogeneous

boundary spanner–client dyads while it enhances the perception of being trusted within heterogeneous dyads.

The perception of being trusted is an important aspect of cross-boundary relationships because it influences

coordination and the costs associated with coordination. © 2015 The Author Journal of Organizational

Behavior Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Keywords: being trusted; boundary spanners; social categorization; age diversity; age heterogeneity; age

composition

Individuals on knowledge-intense projects must often gain the cooperation of counterparts over whom they have no

hierarchical control (Adler, 2001). When these projects span organizational boundaries, the ability to develop

interpersonal trust is particularly critical (Perrone, Zaheer, & McEvily, 2003). Trust enables cooperation when

authority relationships are absent, reduces the need to monitor others’behavior, and facilitates access to “richer-

freer”information (Fulmer & Gelfand, 2012; McEvily, Perrone, & Zaheer, 2003; Ring & Van de Ven, 1994; Uzzi,

1997). Trust not only promotes knowledge exchange (Golden & Raghuram, 2010; Levin & Cross, 2004; Mäkelä &

Brewster, 2009) but also may increase support for the boundary spanner and commitment to decisions made by the

boundary spanner similar to the way that trust in a leader does (Brockner, Siegel, Daly, Tyler, & Martin, 1997; Dirks

& Ferrin, 2002). Despite the potential benefits of trust, developing trust across boundaries can be difficult. People

frequently perceive individuals from other groups and organizations as adversaries with aspirations, beliefs, or styles

of interacting that threaten their goals (Kramer & Lewicki, 2010; Williams, 2001, 2007).

Developing trust with clients is further complicated because trust does not develop in a vacuum. Individuals must often

build interpersonal trust within a broader team context of individuals who are from dissimilar demographic groups.

Rousseau, Sitkin, Burt, and Camerer (1998), for instance , called for researchers to focus more on contextual influences on

trust. Similarly, Burt and Knez (1996) argued that although interpersonal trust is often examined within a dyad, trust is most

often built and maintained in the presence of an audience of “variablyc lose friends, foes, and acquaintances”(p.83).Despite

*Correspondence to: Michele Williams, Cornell University, 393 Ives Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853, U.S.A. E-mail: mw326@cornell.edu

The copyright line for this article was changed on 03 November 2015 after original publication.

© 2015 The Author Journal of Organizational Behavior

Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Received 12 July 2013

Revised 19 June 2015, Accepted 20 June 2015

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and

reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 37, 346–373 (2016)

Published online 1 September 2015 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.2045

Research Article

these calls for investigating the influence of context in the study of trust, we still know little about how context influ-

ences trust development (Currall & Inkpen, 2006; Fulmer & Gelfand, 2012; Schoorman, Mayer, & Davis, 2007).

In this paper, we investigate how the age composition of a client team from another organization forms a context

that may influence a boundary spanner’s experience of trust in his or her dyadic client relationships. Specifically, we

examine the extent to which age heterogeneity, operationalized as generational heterogeneity, affects team

members’perceptions that they are trusted. Although our focus on generational age diversity and the perception

of being trusted is fairly unique in the trust literature (Fulmer & Gelfand, 2012), there is growing scholarly interest

in generational diversity and age-related stereotypes (e.g., Finkelstein, King, & Voyles, 2014; Joshi, Dencker, Franz,

& Martocchio, 2010; Smola & Sutton, 2002).

A generation is a n identifiable groupthat shares birth years, significantlife events at critical developmental stages, and

often similarjob values and attitudes (Joshi etal., 2010; Smola & Sutton, 2002).The presence of intergenerationalcon-

flict is increasingly being reported by HR professionals (SHRM, 2011), and age heterogeneity is becoming a significant

organizational issue (Avery, McKay, & Wilson, 2007; Beatty & Visser, 2005; Fullerton & Toossi, 2001; Kunze,

Boehm, & Bruch, 2011). Not only are workforce training,career development, and retentionaffected by age heteroge-

neity (Armstrong-Stassen & Schlosser, 2011; Avery et al., 2007;de Lange et al., 2010; Goldberg, Finkelstein, Perry, &

Konrad, 2004; Ng & Feldman, 2013) but so are team processes such as information sharing and helping

(Chattopadhyay, 1999; Jehn, Northcraft, & Neale, 1999; Zenger & Lawrence, 1989). Further, as the U.S. workforce

ages and both younger and older workers make up risingproportions of the workforce, mostworkplaces are becoming

multigenerational (Joshi et al., 2010; Lyons & Kuron, 2014; Smola & Sutton, 2002) and this diversity may influence

interorganizational relationships becauseage similarity has been found to influencerelationships that crossorganization-

ally relevantboundaries (e.g., Reagans,2011; Zenger & Lawrence, 1989).Additionally, age diversitymay influence re-

lationships within interorganizational clientteams both because age diversity is often more common than either gender

or racial diversity in the upper echelons of organizations and also because age has been found to be highly salient and

second only to race in the formation of friendship ties (Avery et al., 2007; McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Cook, 2001).

Thus, we develop and test the argument that a team’s generational age composition will significantly moderate the

relationship between dyadic age heterogeneity and perceptions of being trusted. We ask two questions: (1) “When

dyad members are from different organizations, is age similarity in a dyad sufficient to lead a boundary spanner to

believe that he or she is more trusted?”and (2) “If demographically similar dyad members do believe they are more

trusted, does the generational age diversity of the members of the broader team influence a boundary spanner’s

perception of being trusted within a cross-boundary dyad?”

With respect to dyadic relationships, the similarity-attraction paradigm (Byrne, 1971) and social categorization

theory (Hogg & Terry, 2000; Hornsey, 2008; Tajfel, 1981; Turner, 1987) suggest that demographic similarity may

have a positive influence on trust because individuals from the same social category tend to view each other as more

likeable and trustworthy than out-group members (i.e., individuals from other categories; Brewer & Brown, 1998;

Kramer, 1999). However, neither theory specifies the conditions under which team-level heterogeneity may increase

versus decrease perceived trust within demographically similar or dissimilar dyads (Joshi, Liao, & Roh, 2011). We

contribute to the literature on trust by proposing and testing why a team’s demographic composition forms a context

that influences the perception of being trusted within cross-boundary dyads embedded within that team.

We use the similarity-attraction paradigm and social categorization theory to identify “bonding ties”or goodwill

between boundary spanners and client team members and, thus, the network of goodwill available to dyads within

the team context (Adler & Kwon, 2002; Kwon & Adler, 2014). We integrate social categorization theory at the

dyadic level with the social capital or “goodwill”implications of social categorization at the team level to develop

and test our contextual argument that a boundary spanner’s experience of being trusted is influenced by the social

categorization processes that occur in dyadic interactions with a specific client and, degree to which the client team

as a whole serves as a cooperative resource full of goodwill for the dyadic boundary spanner–client relationship. We

focus on cross-boundary dyads as unique relationships that not only vary in their quality but also form an important

component of “a system of interdependent dyadic relationships”(Avolio, Walumbwa, & Weber, 2009; Uhl-Bien,

2006) for which interpersonal trust is highly relevant (Fulmer & Gelfand, 2012).

DOES TEAM GENERATIONAL DIVERSITY INFLUENCE DYADIC TRUST? 347

© 2015 The Author Journal of Organizational Behavior

Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd

J. Organiz. Behav. 37, 346–373 (2016)

DOI: 10.1002/job