Do human resource management practices boost up employees' impersonal trust? Evidence from the banking sector of Bangladesh
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/EBHRM-08-2020-0111 |
| Published date | 11 March 2022 |
| Date | 11 March 2022 |
| Pages | 275-292 |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Global HRM |
| Author | Sarmin Sultana,Md. Shariful Alam Khandakar |
Do human resource management
practices boost up employees’
impersonal trust? Evidence from
the banking sector of Bangladesh
Sarmin Sultana
Department of Business Administration, Stamford University Bangladesh,
Dhaka, Bangladesh, and
Md. Shariful Alam Khandakar
Department of Tourism and Hospitality Management, University of Dhaka,
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Abstract
Purpose –The main purpose of the studyis to identify the relationship between human resource management
(HRM) practices and impersonal trust. The study focuses on five HRM practices, namely training, fair reward
and promotion opportunity, employment security and performance appraisal and impact of those on
impersonal trust.
Design/methodology/approach –Data for the study have been collected from 384 front line service
provider female employees of 39 private commercial banks through non-probability judgmental sampling
technique and analyzed by applying structural equation modeling-partial least square (SEM-PLS) method.
Findings –The findings of the study reveals that all the five HRM practices, namely training, fair reward and
promotion opportunity, employment security and performance appraisal, are positively and significantly
related with impersonal trust.
Originality/value –Private commercial banks in Bangladesh are rapidly growing and facing huge
competition to improve the competitive advantage of employees. Impersonaltrust of employees is required for
achieving competitive advantage. Due to the lack of research and scanty of knowledge in that field, the study
offers a new avenue of existing knowledge to the stakeholders and researchers on how to develop impersonal
trust with necessary recommendations.
Keywords HRM practices, Impersonal trust, Private commercial banks
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Trust is an increasingly valuable managerial resource for organization to develop and
maintain its human resources. At present decades, trust is well thought out as a decisive
factor in attaining employees’satisfaction and better organizational outcome (Edwards and
Cable, 2009;Gulati and Sytch, 2007;Fulmer and Gelfand, 2012). A number of studies have
shown employee trust to be a critical variable affecting the effectiveness, efficiency and
performance of organizations (Whitney, 1994;Kramer and Tyler, 1996;Mayer and Davis,
1999;Bozic et al., 2018;Troesch and Bauer, 2017). Working as a lubricant of organizational
functioning, trust increases voluntary compliance, altruistic behaviors and individual and
organizational performance (Dirks and Ferrin, 2001). Employees who trust their organization
are more likely to accept organizational goals, more actively engaged in desirable work-
related behaviors and stay with the organization longer (Dirks, 2000;Kramer, 1999). On the
other hand, a low level of trust leads to deteriorate work performance while increase
transaction costs, reduce the effectiveness in work (Dirks and Ferrin, 2001) and produce
counterproductive behavior, such as obstruction or seeking revenge (Bies and Tripp, 1996)or
decide to leave (Robinson, 1996). In fact, organization consumes huge amount of benefits if
HRM practices–
employees’
impersonal trust
275
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/2049-3983.htm
Received 17 August 2020
Revised 24 September 2020
30 March 2021
4 August 2021
22 October 2021
17 January 2022
Accepted 8 February 2022
Evidence-based HRM: a Global
Forum for Empirical Scholarship
Vol. 10 No. 3, 2022
pp. 275-292
© Emerald Publishing Limited
2049-3983
DOI10.1108/EBHRM-08-2020-0111
trust presence in organization, such as organizational commitment, job satisfaction (Bozic
et al., 2018), competitive advantage (Barney and Hansen, 1994), high-financial flow and
reduction of cost (Tax et al., 1998).
According to Ellonen et al. (2008) trust has both personal and impersonal dimensions and
both of these dimensions shaping overall organizational trust. Earlier, a number of researches
paid attention on personal trust in organizations, while lessattention has given on impersonal
trust (Vanhala et al., 2011). In the age of globalization, organizational complexity has been
increased and to cope up with this complexity more attention should be given on impersonal
trust through which organization can retain their experienced and qualified employees.
As impersonal trust is one of the significant issue, therefore, measuring impersonal trust
signify the greater value. Earlier studies have mentioned that a number of factors such as
interpersonal communication, perception of organizational justice and personal learning can
affect the impersonal trust (Safari et al., 2020). Besides these, some of the earlier studies
mentioned that HRM practices is one of the important factor that can affect impersonal trust
(Nishanthi and Kulathunga, 2018;Vanhala et al., 2011). Although earlier many studies that
link numerous HRM practices with trust (e.g. McCauley and Kuhnert, 1992;Whitener, 1998;
Gillespie and Mann, 2004;Zeffane and Connell, 2003;Mishra and Morrissey, 1990), these has
only been considered in an interactional level between employees and managers. Moreover,
researchers who have studied organizational trust have only looked at trust in senior
management (McCauley and Kuhnert, 1992;Mayer and Davis, 1999). Only Vanhala and
Ahteela (2011) have looked at trust in organizational perspective by considering its major
dimensions. Thus, studies conducted by taking impersonal trust and HRM practices are very
few (Nishanthi and Kulathunga, 2018;Vanhala et al., 2011). Current study seeks to fill the gap
in research by exploring several HRM practices as antecedents of employee’s impersonal
trust. Evidence suggests that HRM practices are organizational activities that increase
employees’trust toward the organization (e.g. Gould-Williams, 20 03;Nishanthi and
Kulathunga, 2018;Whitener, 1997). Social exchange relationship is strongly contingent on
the trust of one of the parties (e.g. employees) with regard to the obligations of the other party
(e.g. organization) over the relatively long-term period. It is perceived that if the work
organization shows support and benevolence through good practices of HRM, employees will
be inclined to communicate by trusting organization more (Gould-Williams and Davies, 2005;
Tzafrir, 2005;Tzafrir et al., 2004).
The current study considers the impersonal trust of female employees’working in private
commercial banks of Bangladesh. Women do not distrust their bosses due to their general
nature, rather it is the result of their working environment and experience they gather from
there (Stawiski et al., 2010). As women always face gender harassment, inequality, threat of
job loss and unfair reward, they started to distrust their organization, and to retain women
employees, organization should build trust among them (Stawiski et al., 2010). Therefore,
study considering building trust among female employees is more important for the
betterment of the organization.
In essence, the current study contributes to the literature first of all by considering link
between HRM practices and impersonal trust of employees working in private commercial
bank in Bangladesh. There is an increase in studies focusing on the organizational level
impact of HRM practices in the last ten years (Absar et al., 2010), but so far none have
undertaken a comprehensive study on impact of HRM practices on trust in Bangladeshi
context. Second, the concept of impersonal trust tend to have been investigated more in
developed countries (Nishanthi and Kulathunga, 2018), while the present study looks at it in a
developing country perspective. Third, the current study considered the impersonal trust of
female employees because women trust may be an asset and women are less likely to lose
trust and more likely to restore trust than their counterpart (Haselhuhn et al., 2015). Moreover,
the results of this study may help decision-makers to determine appropriate HRM practices in
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