The belonging model of trust

• Author: Kelly A. Delaney‐Klinger,Joshua R. Knapp,Therese A. Sprinkle,Michael J. Urick
• Published date: 01 September 2019
• Date: 01 September 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/nml.21370

RESEARCH ARTICLE

The belonging model of trust

Joshua R. Knapp

1

| Therese A. Sprinkle

2

| Michael J. Urick

3

|

Kelly A. Delaney-Klinger

1

1

Management Department, College of

Business and Economics, University of

Wisconsin-Whitewater, Whitewater,

Wisconsin

2

Healthcare Management & Organizational

Leadership Department, Lender School of

Business, Quinnipiac University, Hamden,

Connecticut

3

Business Department, Alex G. McKenna

School of Business, Economics, and

Government, Saint Vincent College,

Latrobe, Pennsylvania

Correspondence

Joshua R. Knapp, University of Wisconsin-

Whitewater, College of Business and

Economics, 809 W. Starin Road,

Whitewater, WI 53190-1790.

Email: knappjr@uww.edu

Abstract

Although we know that high-quality employee–

organization relationships are beneficial, these relation-

ships are complex and not fully understood, especially

among employees of nonprofit organizations. In particular,

we know little about how these employees perceive trust,

which may overlook an important contributor to effective

management. We begin to address this issue by testing a

new theoretical model that conceptualizes perceived

insider status, psychological ownership, and organiza-

tional identification as foundations for the perception of

justice and subsequent trust. Our results indicate that psy-

chological ownership and perceived insider status relate to

trust through procedural and interpersonal justice. These

results contrast those typically found in for-profit contexts

in that organizational identification did not predict justice

and that distributive and informational justice did not pre-

dict trust.

KEYWORDS

justice, organizational identification, perceived insider status,

psychological ownership, trust

1|INTRODUCTION

A growing body of research examines the nature and importance of trust (i.e., the willingness to be

vulnerable to another party without fear of being taken advantage of, Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman,

1995; Rousseau, Sitkin, Burt, & Camerer, 1998) for nonprofit organizations. Researchers have exam-

ined how trust relates to financial donations (e.g., Alhidari, Veludo-de-Oliveira, Yousafzai, & Yani-

de-Soriano, 2018; Hager & Hedberg, 2016; Hou, Zhang, & King, 2017; Tremblay-Boire & Prakash,

Received: 28 August 2018 Revised: 5 May 2019 Accepted: 6 May 2019

DOI: 10.1002/nml.21370

Nonprofit Management and Leadership. 2019;30:133–153. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/nml © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 133

2017), volunteerism (e.g., Siisiäinen & Kankainen, 2015; Taniguchi & Marshall, 2014), inter-

organizational collaboration (e.g., Bunger, 2013), and client attitudes (e.g., Hoogervorst, Metz,

Roza, & van Baren, 2016). Interestingly, much of this body of research is externally focused in that

either the trustee or the trustor typically exists primarily outside of the nonprofit organization itself.

There are some examples of research examining internal nonprofit employees and trust in their

organizations. For example, Zeffane and Bani Melhem (2017) found nonprofit employees in the

United Arab Emirates to be more trusting of their workplaces than for-profit employees. Similarly,

employee trust in management of nonprofits can be higher partly because of better communication

and manager fairness (Mirvis, 1992). In addition, Handy and Katz (1998) suggest that nonprofit

employees' trust is exemplified by self-selection into nonprofit roles despite sometimes receiving

lower pay. Yet these kinds of studies remain scarce and do not extensively examine trust formation

among nonprofit employees, and this body of work continues to be incomplete even though the topic

was identified as a critical concern over 25 years ago (Mirvis, 1992).

This research gap is unfortunate because nonprofit employees represent a large portion of the

overall workforce (7.4% globally, Salamon, Sokowski, Haddock, & Tice, 2013; 11.9% in the United

States, Salamon, 2018), and there are many well-documented benefits of employee trust identified in

for-profit contexts, such as improved attitudes, citizenship, individual performance (Dirks & Ferrin,

2001), cooperation (Balliet & Van Lange, 2013), knowledge sharing, and team performance (P. Lee,

Gillespie, Mann, & Wearing, 2010). To this end, we develop and test a new theoretical model (See

Figure 1) that conceptualizes how trusting nonprofit employee–organization relationships can be

facilitated by a meaningful sense of belonging.

To explain, the perception of belonging within an organization can be founded on a sense of psy-

chological ownership (PO), perceived insider status (PIS), and/or organizational identification (OID)

Interpersonal

Justice

(Time 2)

Procedural

Justice

(Time 2)

Informational

Justice

(Time 2)

Distributive

Justice

(Time 2)

Trust

(Time 2)

Standardized path coefcients shown. ** p < .01 * p < .05

Residuals of Justice Measures Allowed to Covary

Psychological

Ownership

(Time 1)

Perceived

Insider Status

(Time 1)

Organizational

Identication

(Time 1)

-.11ns

.66**

.36**

-.11ns

.17**

FIGURE 1 Resultsfor the belonging model of trust

134 KNAPP ET AL.