A holistic overview on the antecedents of organizational trust: Aggregated theoretical framework

Overview & Synopsis

The recent interest of management researchers in the issue of organizational trust is mainly based on its indispensable role in efficient and effective management focused on human capital. Organizational trust is thus a phenomenon of uncertainty minimization, and the embodiment of a work climate that is worthy of the name. While organizational trust is understood as central to any exchange relationship, it has not been studied in a pre-birth approach to understand how it occurs in an organizational context. This paper aims to clarify the concept of organizational trust through different dimensions and forms, and to present a holistic overview of its antecedents levels taking into consideration all the variables that can directly or indirectly lead to organizational trust. The enrichment of the understanding of organizational trust is achieved by drawing on the affective and cognitive dimension of trust to clearly identify all the potential elements that can lead to organizational trust. Obviously, the theory mobilized in this research work is the theory of the social exchange which has been greatly shaken to study the exchange relations between the organization and its employees. For this purpose, various backgrounds are examined in this paper, including individual-level antecedents (Personality traits, propensity to trust), organizational-level antecedents (Organizational support, organizational effectiveness and Human resources policy), and cultural-level antecedents (Values, power distance, individualism/collectivism). The discussion and analysis of the different relationships with various antecedent levels of organizational trust has allowed us to propose a global theoretical framework in order to fundamentally identify multiple areas of future research and to contribute to the knowledge of the topic.