Trust

Question 1

Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman (1995)

Answer 1

Proposed a model of trust that included both the trustor and the trustee and attempted to add clarity to what trust actually is (i.e., it isn’t risk)

Trust is the “willingness of a party 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”

Argued for 3 areas of antecedents of trust:

Trustee: Ability (able to do things), Benevolence (do positive things), and Integrity (follows a set of acceptable values)

Propensity to Trust - individual difference in trustor

Question 2

Dirks & Ferrin (2001)

Answer 2

Two primary models of trust in the literature

Main Effect:
Higher levels of trust in a relationship partner is positively related to behavior and performance (i.e., communication, information sharing, OCB, effort, conflict, negotiation, individual and team performance)

Robust findings linking trust to attitudes, much less on behaviors

Moderator: Trust facilitates or hinders cooperation, performance, etc.

Situation Strength (Mischel, 1977) can guide us.

Weak Situation - main effect
Mid-range - moderates, reduces ambiguity
Strong - trust has no effect

Trust facilitates interpretation of an actor’s past actions or event

Question 3

McAllister (1995)

Answer 3

Affect & Cognition Trust

Drew upon sociological and social-psychological literature on interpersonal trust

Cognitive Trust: beliefs about peer’s reliability and dependability (past performance, similarity, credentials) but these did not pan out in the field study

Affect Trust: reciprocated interpersonal care & concern

Each form of trust has distinct antecedents and consequences (i.e., reciprocal care/concern and monitoring)

Question 4

Kim et al. (2004)

Answer 4

Trust Repair - activities directed at making a trustor’s trusting beliefs and trusting intentions more positive after a violation is perceived to have occurred

Two competing views- apologize (and admit guilt) or deny

Type of violation:
Competency - apologize
Integrity - deny

Experimental studies, job interview setting, supported hypotheses

Trust repaired more successfully when violators apologized for violations concerning matters of competence but denied culpability for violating matters of integrity AND
apologized when there was evidence of guilt but denied culpability when there was evidence of innocence.

Question 5

Colquitt et al. 2007

Answer 5

Trust Meta Analysis

Demonstrated that ability, benevolence, and integrity uniquely predicted trust (willingness to be vulnerable)

Trust propensity also uniquely predicted trust while controlling for the antecedents (although it was a weak relationship)

Thus, even in the presence of trustworthy information, propensity to trust predicts trust behavior

Trust partially mediates between trustworthiness and trust propensity on risk taking, task performance, ocb, and deviance

Future research: which antecedent is most important in which job (found integrity most important in managerial and service jobs), looking at multiple referents…what about trust violations with one referent and implications for relations with other referents in the org?

Question 6

Meyerson et al. 1996

Answer 6

Swift trust and temporary groups - been given a lot of attention in virtual teams research…looks at how trust develops when there is no prior history to go off of, there is not an ongoing relationship