TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SUPERVISORS' FELT TRUST AND TEAM-EFFECTIVENESS EVALUATION
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.19090/pp.2016.4.413-427Keywords:
supervisors’ felt trust, supervisory justice climate, team work engagement, team effectivenessAbstract
This study explores the relation between the supervisors’ felt trust, a perception that subordinates are willing to accept vulnerability to their supervisor’s actions, and evaluation of the team effectiveness. The results of structural-equation modelling performed on a multiple-source sample of 659 employees, nested within 196 teams, along with 196 team leaders, suggested that the supervisors’ felt trust directly raised the evaluation given to the team effectiveness. In other words, when a supervisor feels more trusted, he or she appraises team effectiveness more positively. Moreover, we consider the potential underlying mechanism linking the latter. The results reveal that, when the supervisor feels trusted by his or her subordinate team members, they share the perception of fair treatment by the supervisor, which enhances their work engagement and further alters the team effectiveness. Namely, due to the perceptions of supervisory justice climate and the team work engagement, the supervisors’ felt trust raises the team-effectiveness evaluation. To put it differently, the supervisors’ felt trust alters the team-effectiveness evaluation both directly and indirectly, via the teams’ supervisory justice climate and work engagement. Trustees may not sometimes feel the trust of trustors: leaders may not recognize subordinates’ trust, as it may be internal and non-verbal. These results show that the recognition has beneficial effects, primarily on the team-effectiveness evaluation, and also on the supervisory justice climate and the team work engagement.Metrics
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