A time to trust? The buffering effect of trust and its temporal variations in the context of high‐reliability teams

• Author: Michael J. Burtscher,Klaus Jonas,Gerhard Tröster,Bertolt Meyer,Sebastian Feese
• Date: 01 November 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2271
• Published date: 01 November 2018

SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE

A time to trust? The buffering effect of trust and its temporal

variations in the context of high‐reliability teams

Michael J. Burtscher

1

|Bertolt Meyer

2

|Klaus Jonas

1

|Sebastian Feese

3

|

Gerhard Tröster

3

1

Department of Psychology, University of

Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland

2

Department of Psychology, Chemnitz

University of Technology, Chemnitz, Germany

3

Department of Information Technology and

Electrical Engineering, ETH Zurich, Zürich,

Switzerland

Correspondence

Michael J. Burtscher, Social and Business

Psychology, Department of Psychology,

University of Zurich, Binzmuehlestrasse 14/

13, 8050 Zurich, Switzerland.

Email: m.burtscher@psychologie.uzh.ch

Funding information

Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung

der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung, Grant/

Award Number: CR12I1_137741

Summary

This study aims to further clarify the functionality of job resources in the context of high‐

reliability teams. Combining extant stress models with theoretical considerations from team

research, we address temporal variations in the buffering effect of trust in teammates. We

hypothesize that trust buffers the negative effect of objective physical activity on perceived

strain and that this buffering effect is more pronounced during later performance episodes

(i.e., when employees complete a series of temporally distinguishable tasks). We tested the

hypotheses with a sample of professional firefighters who completed a sequence of 3

performance episodes in a high‐fidelity simulation environment. Each participant was equipped

with a smartphone capturing individual motion activity, which we used as an indicator of physical

activity. In line with our hypotheses, multilevel modeling revealed a buffering effect of trust on

the relationship between physical activity and perceived strain. Importantly, this buffering effect

was more pronounced in the second performance episode as compared with the first

performance episode. Our findings add a temporal perspective to the understanding of the

effectiveness of job resources. In addition, the current study illustrates the usefulness of

smartphones for obtaining behavioral data in a naturalistic setting.

KEYWORDS

high‐reliability occupations, social sensing, teams, time, trust

1|INTRODUCTION

In some occupations, employees are regularly pushed to their limits

and beyond. Emergency physicians experience time pressure and a

turbulent work environment, police officers face life‐threatening

situations, and firefighters have to cope with extreme heat and smoke.

These occupations have been jointly referred to as high‐reliability

occupations—complex work environments rich with the potential for

error, where errors have serious consequences (Weick, Sutcliffe, &

Obstfeld, 1999). Central characteristics of high‐reliability occupations

include (a) that many tasks are performed in teams (e.g., Flin, O'Connor,

& Mearns, 2002; Wilson, Burke, Priest, & Salas, 2005) and (b) that

these teams perform their work in recurring performance episodes

(Ishak & Ballard, 2012; Marks, Mathieu, & Zaccaro, 2001). The current

study aims to improve our understanding of how these characteristics

interact to affect work outcomes. In particular, we investigate temporal

variations in the buffering effect of job resources across multiple

performance episodes.

Job resources are assumed to buffer the negative impact of job

demands by affecting the perceptions evoked by said demands

(Bakker & Demerouti, 2007; Kahn & Byosiere, 1992). In the team

context, trust constitutes a key variable that affects a variety of pro-

cesses and outcomes (e.g., De Jong, Dirks, & Gillespie, 2016;

Mathieu, Maynard, Rapp, & Gilson, 2008; Salas, Sims, & Burke,

2005). Importantly, when people work together, trust influences

one person's perception of their colleagues' actions or events related

to those actions (Dirks & Ferrin, 2001). Following this notion, we sug-

gest that trust in teammates represents a resource capable of

affecting work perceptions in high‐reliability teams; in particular, we

propose that trust buffers the negative effects of objective physical

activity on perceived strain.

Although research has provided useful insights into the work of

high‐reliability teams (e.g., Salas & Rosen, 2013), little is known

about the impact of recurring performance episodes. This is a

problem because recurring performance episodes constitute an inte-

gral part of the work routine in high‐reliability occupations and they

Received: 30 September 2016 Revised: 17 January 2018 Accepted: 24 January 2018

DOI: 10.1002/job.2271

J Organ Behav. 2018;39:1099–1112. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job 1099