A multilevel perspective of interpersonal trust: Individual, dyadic, and cross‐level predictors of performance

• Published date: 01 November 2016
• Author: Naina Gupta,Jeffrey M. Pollack,Violet Ho,Lei Lai
• Date: 01 November 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2104

A multilevel perspective of interpersonal trust:

Individual, dyadic, and cross-level predictors of

performance

NAINA GUPTA

1

*

,†

, VIOLET HO

2†

, JEFFREY M. POLLACK

3

AND LEI LAI

4

1

Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

2

Robins School of Business, University of Richmond, Richmond, Virginia, U.S.A.

3

Poole College of Management, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S.A.

4

Freeman School of Business, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.A.

Summary While it is generally known that interpersonal trust facilitates individual functioning, few studies have exam-

ined the role of specific features of the interpersonal trust network —individual, dyadic, third-party, and

network-level features —on individual performance. We adopt a multilevel perspective of interpersonal trust

to examine how individuals’performance is not only predicted by their individual-level centrality in the

interpersonal trust network but also moderated, at the network level, by the overall centralized nature of that

network. Further, we examine whether mutual trust relationships at the dyadic level, as well as shared trust

ties to common third parties, can predict individuals’performance. We test our hypotheses with 206 members

in 15 professional networking groups and find that interpersonal trust operates at multiple levels to predict

members’performance in terms of generating income from business referrals. These findings provide theoret-

ical and practical implications on how interpersonal trust relationships operate and can be managed for

performance gains. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: interpersonal trust; centrality; centralization; structural equivalence; individual performance;

professional networking groups; multilevel

The importance of interpersonal trust, defined as the willingness of a trustor to be vulnerable to the actions of a

trustee based on the expectation that the trustee will perform a particular action (Rousseau, Sitkin, Burt, & Camerer,

1998; Schoorman, Mayer, & Davis, 2007), has been firmly established in organizational research over recent

decades. Multiple studies demonstrate that trust facilitates social functioning and individual action, yielding positive

outcomes that include enhanced work attitudes, conflict resolution, communication, and work performance

(Colquitt, Scott, & LePine, 2007 and Dirks & Ferrin, 2001 for reviews). However, despite the fact that interpersonal

trust comprises a relationship between two specific people (i.e., the trustor and a particular trustee) and can vary

across different referents within the organization, prior research has primarily examined individuals’trust toward

a broad group of people (e.g., trust in coworkers as a group) or in one specific individual in the organization

(e.g., trust in leader or manager) (Colquitt et al., 2007). While this research has enhanced our knowledge of trust,

a more comprehensive examination of interpersonal trust should encompass an individual’s trust relationships with

the various members that she/he works with, as well as the other members’trust in each other. Doing so reflects not

only the organizational reality that individuals have different degrees of trust in different targets but also the fact that

any two parties’relationship is embedded within a larger configuration of trust relationships between other

members, which could either facilitate or constrain the actions of the trustor and/or trustee.

*Correspondence to: Naina Gupta, Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798.

naina@ntu.edu.sg. E-mail: naina@ntu.edu.sg

†

The order of authorship for the first two authors is alphabetical reflecting equal contribution from both authors.

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 21 November 2014

Revised 26 February 2016, Accepted 28 February 2016

Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 37, 1271–1292 (2016)

Published online 29 March 2016 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.2104

Research Article

A few studies have taken steps to examine the predictors of individuals’trust relationships with various members

(e.g., Chua, Ingram, & Morris, 2008; Chua, Morris, & Ingram, 2009; Ferrin, Dirks, & Shah, 2006; Lau & Liden,

2008; Sparrowe & Liden, 2005). However, research on the performance implications ensuing from such relation-

ships is lacking, thereby raising questions as to whether one’s trust in another can, indeed, facilitate one or both

parties’performance. For instance, while McAllister (1995) proposed that an individual’s trust in a peer will influ-

ence the trustor’s and trustee’s performance, his study provided support only for the former. Along similar lines but

crossing organizational boundaries, Zaheer, McEvily, and Perrone (1998) study found that a buyer’s interpersonal

trust in a supplier did not enhance the latter’s performance. Other studies, specifically in the context of professional

networking groups, found trust effects on other individual outcomes such as cognitive and emotional changes in

members but did not examine the effects on individual performance (Bergh, Thorgren, & Wincent, 2011; Peltier

& Naidu, 2012). Thus, despite prior research documenting a positive link between trust and performance at the team

level (e.g., Alge, Wiethoff, & Klein, 2003; Dirks, 1999), it remains unclear whether such performance benefits will

translate to the individual and dyadic levels. Indeed, this lack of compelling evidence for the link between interper-

sonal trust and individual performance has led researchers to conclude that “the effects of trust on various workplace

behaviors and performance outcomes are weaker and less consistent”compared with effects on workplace attitudes

(Dirks & Ferrin, 2001, p. 455).

The present study addresses the limited research examining (1) individuals’specifictrust relationships with different

members and (2) the performance implications ensuing from such interpersonal trust relationships. Specifically, we

investigate performance outcomes ensuing from interpersonal trust across multiple levels, given that interpersonal

relationships can operate at various levels through different mechanisms (Kilduff & Tsai, 2005). We first examine

the centrality of an individual’s position in the trust network (i.e., the individual level) by testing the performance

outcomes of occupying a central position, and also taking into account the moderating role of network-level (or

global-level) centralization, capturing the extent to which ties in a network are focused on one or few members rather

than being equally distributed among all members. Adopting this cross-level moderator model, (Klein & Kozlowski,

2000) provides a more contextualized extension of prior findings relating to individual-level trust centrality as it tests

whether performance benefits enjoyed by a highly central individual will vary depending on whether there are many

or few other central figures in the overall network. In so doing, we recognize the fact that individuals are embedded

within the larger context (Kozlowski & Klein, 2000) and the overall network structure can facilitate or impede the

function of individual network features (Contractor, Wasserman, & Faust, 2006). Examining the cross-level perfor-

mance implications of interpersonal trust also addresses the call for more research on the “study of the whole and the

parts of social network simultaneously”(Kilduff & Brass, 2010, p. 325), and the study of cross-level pressures on

individual actions (Brass, Galaskiewicz, Greve, & Tsai, 2004).

Because trust is fundamentally a phenomenon between two parties, it also operates at a more fine-grained, dyadic

level to shape both parties’behaviors toward each other. Thus, we also examine how a reciprocated form of dyadic

trust, where a party trusts and is also trusted by another party, can yield performance benefits. Investigating

this strong, reciprocated form of trust differs from, and contributes to, extant literature examining dyadic trust

because prior works (e.g., Chua et al., 2008, 2009; Ferrin et al., 2006) have only looked at one party’s trust in

another (i.e., a weaker form of trust), and examined only the antecedents, not consequences, of such unidirectional

trust. By examining whether reciprocated trust relationships provide additional value over unidirectional trust in

predicting performance, we offer a more comprehensive picture of the performance implications of dyadic trust

relations.

Finally, just as we recognize the fact that individuals’network positions are embedded within the larger network

structure, we also acknowledge that dyads are embedded within relationships among other actors in the network. In

the trust literature, scholars have noted a skewed bias toward examining the psychological nature of trust without

taking into account the social context surrounding the dyad (Ferrin et al., 2006; Kramer, 1996). Because “each

individual typically participates in multiple dyadic relationships, and these relationships aggregate to form a

complex social structure that surrounds each dyad and may influence the trust that forms between the members of

the dyad”(Ferrin et al., 2006, pp. 870–871), a more comprehensive examination of trust needs to consider the third

1272 N. GUPTA ET AL.

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 37, 1271–1292 (2016)

DOI: 10.1002/job