The path(s) to employee trust in direct supervisor in nascent and established relationships: A fuzzy set analysis

• Author: Stav Fainshmidt,M. Lance Frazier,Christina Tupper
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2091
• Date: 01 October 2016
• Published date: 01 October 2016

The path(s) to employee trust in direct supervisor

in nascent and established relationships: A fuzzy

set analysis

M. LANCE FRAZIER

1

*, CHRISTINA TUPPER

2

AND STAV FAINSHMIDT

3

1

Department of Marketing and Management, Heider College of Business, Creighton University,Omaha, Nebraska, U.S.A.

2

Department of Management, College of Business and Public Administration, Old Dominion University,Norfolk, Virginia,

U.S.A.

3

Department of Management and International Business, College of Business, Florida International University,Miami,

Florida, U.S.A.

Summary While many of the propositions advanced by Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman’s (1995) integrative model of

interpersonal trust have been supported empirically, we still know little about how time impacts the relative

importance of the model’s elements. In addition, there may be situations in which trust can develop with

lesser degrees of any of the trustworthiness facets or propensity to trust. Hence, we apply a configurational

set-theoretic perspective to examine what combinations will be sufficient to produce the presence of trust

in a direct supervisor across nascent and established relationships. We find three distinct configurations asso-

ciated with trust in supervisor, which allows us to elaborate theory and provide novel insights to trust

research. In particular, we find that in both nascent and established relationships, perceptions of high super-

visor ability, benevolence, and integrity constitute a sufficient configuration for high trust in supervisor. In

established relationships, however, there were two paths to high trust in supervisor: (i) perceptions of high

supervisor ability and integrity, or (ii) perceptions of high supervisor ability and benevolence, accompanied

by high propensity to trust. As such, in established relationships, perceptions of high supervisor benevolence

and high propensity to trust may be substitutable with perceptions of high supervisor integrity. Copyright ©

2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: fuzzy-set analysis; propensity to trust; trust; trustworthiness

Introduction

The study of trust has garnered considerable attention across a broad array of literatures, including sociology, psy-

chology, economics, ethics, and management (Rousseau, Sitkin, Burt, & Camerer, 1998). In the workplace, research

has shown that trust facilitates a number of important work outcomes, including job performance, citizenship behav-

iors, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and reduced counterproductive behaviors (Colquitt, Scott, &

LePine, 2007; Dirks & Ferrin, 2002). Further, trust has been shown to be relevant at the individual, group, and

organizational levels (Fulmer & Gelfand, 2012). Trust will likely continue to be a significant factor in organizational

contexts as environments become more dynamic, teamwork and coordination are increasingly required for success-

ful and efficient essential organizational processes, and key resources and capabilities become intangible and

socially complex (Ilgen & Pulakos, 1999). Therefore, it is imperative that research continues to advance our under-

standing of trust in work-based relationships.

Although multiple models of trust have been developed through the years (e.g., Butler, 1991; Lewicki & Bunker,

1996), one of the most influential models of trust was developed by Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman (1995).

*Correspondence to: M. Lance Frazier, Department of Marketing and Management, Heider College of Business, Creighton University, Omaha,

Nebraska, U.S.A. E-mail: LanceFrazier@creighton.edu

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 19 December 2014

Revised 03 January 2016, Accepted 05 January 2016

Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 37, 1023–1043 (2016)

Published online 1 February 2016 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.2091

Research Article

According to this model, trust is defined as the “willingness to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on

the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective of the ability to

monitor or control that other party”(Mayer et al., 1995, p. 712). The model of Mayer et al. (1995) made two impact-

ful contributions that are a key to the present study. First, the model conceptually differentiated trust and trustwor-

thiness. Trustworthiness encompasses the trustee characteristics that are antecedents to trust, namely, ability,

benevolence, and integrity. Second, the model captured the dispositional influences on one’s willingness to trust

by including propensity to trust as another antecedent. Taken together, this theoretical model maintains that trust-

worthiness perceptions and propensity to trust are predictive of trust development in interpersonal work relation-

ships. Indeed, the meta-analysis of the model by Colquitt et al. (2007) found that ability, benevolence, integrity,

and propensity to trust all had significant and unique positive relationships with trust.

However, there are still opportunities to further our understanding of trust development within the Mayer

et al. (1995) model. Specifically, we have identified two issues that we attempt to address in this study. First,

while Colquitt and colleagues (2007) meta-analytic work indicates that higher levels of all antecedents will

likely lead to higher trust, there is still the possibility that simultaneous high levels of all antecedents may

not be a necessary condition for trust to develop. Indeed, Mayer et al. (1995) suggested that “there may be

situations in which a meaningful amount of trust can develop with lesser degrees of the three”(p. 721) facets

of trustworthiness. To date, minimal research has attempted to explore the combinations of propensity to trust

and trustworthiness facets that are sufficient to actually produce higher levels of trust (see Dirks & Skarlicki,

2009 for an excepti on).

Second, time was deemed to be an important element of trust development in Mayer and colleagues’(1995)

original work. The model recognizes that as people interact over time, perceptions of trustworthiness and trust are

updated. Similarly, an employee in the early stages of a relationship may rely on different perceived facets to shape

trust perceptions, compared with an employee in a more established relationship. Thus, the stage of a relationship

may alter the combinations of perceptions sufficient for higher levels of employee trust. However, to date, few

studies have included a time element while examining trust within this model. Schoorman, Mayer, and Davis (2007)

noted this limitationand called for research to more specificallyexamine the “time frames in which each of the variables

contributes to tru st”(p. 346).

With these issues in mind, we make two unique contributions to the trust literature. First, we apply a con-

figurational set-theoretic perspective to trust relations to examine what combinations of supervisor trustworthi-

ness perceptions and employee propensity to trust will be sufficient to observe the presence of trust in a direct

supervisor. A review of the trust literature by Fulmer and Gelfand (2012) noted that methods used to examine

trust are “highly uniform within each level of analysis”(p. 1213). By applying a unique technique, we hope to

shed further insight into how trust is impacted by propensity to trust and trustworthiness perceptions. Second,

we also examine how these combinations differ across relationship length between supervisor and employees.

Relationships in organizations vary in length, and different combinations of antecedents may apply to different

stages of a relationship. We attempt to advance the understanding of employee trust in organizations by further

examining these issues.

Theoretical Background

The model of trust set forth by Mayer and colleagues (1995) provided conceptual distinctions between the key

elements of trust development. First, characteristics of the trustor have an impact on trust. The trust literature has

long recognized the existence of a dispositional component to trust (Kramer, 1999; Rotter, 1967). Propensity to trust,

which is defined by Mayer and colleagues as “a general willingness to trust others”(p. 715), is generally seen as

being a stable trait that generalizes across interactions and situations that will impact one’s likelihood of trusting

another (Frazier, Johnson, & Fainshmidt, 2013).

1024 M. L. FRAZIER ET AL.

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 37, 1023–1043 (2016)

DOI: 10.1002/job