Trust In Personal And Impersonal Forms Its Antecedents And Consequences: A Conceptual Analysis Within Organizational Context

Abstract

Although Mayer et al.’s (1995) integrative model of organizational trust has clarified some confusion regarding the concept of interpersonal trust involving two specific parties by differentiating between factors that cause trust, trust itself, and outcomes of trust through 1) it defined trust as the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party,2) trust is in turn influenced by a trustor’s propensity to trust, the trustor’s perceived characteristics of a trustee (e.g., trustworthiness of trustee based on his/her ability, benevolence, and  integrity), 3) the trust leads to actual risk taking in a relationship since behavioral trust is the assuming of risk, and 4), the desired outcome results from the result of risk taking. But researchers like Luhman (1979), McCauley & Kuhnert (1992), Zaheer et al.(1998), Costigan et al.(1998), McKnight et al.(1998,2002), and Atkinson and Butcher( 2003) are of the view that root of trust lies in individual relationships is not in opposition to the experience of trust both inside interpersonal relationships and as an institutional phenomenon beyond interpersonal relationships. Moreover, Colquitt et al.(2007) investigated, it remains unclear that which trust antecedents have the strongest relationships with trust whether trust fully mediates the effects of trustworthiness and trust propensity on behavioral outcomes, and do trust relationship vary according to whether the trustee is a leader versus a coworker? Therefore, the aim of this conceptual paper is to investigate the phenomenon of trust in its personal and impersonal forms i.e., interpersonal and institutional(organizational) trust with multiple foci i.e. coworkers, supervisor, and institution(organization) through addressing threefold agenda; (1) to explore the concept of trust by distinguishing its antecedents i.e., trustor’s propensity to trust, the trustor’s perceived characteristics of a trustee, and institutional trust from trust, (2) to explore whether trust fully mediates the effects of trustworthiness, trust propensity, and institutional trust on behavioral outcomes such as organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behavior, and employees task performance, and (3) to explore that do trust relationships vary according to whether the trustee is a supervisor/leader versus a coworker.