Feeling trusted and employee outcomes: the double-edged sword of political behaviour
| Pages | 1653-1668 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-11-2017-0368 |
| Date | 04 November 2019 |
| Published date | 04 November 2019 |
| Author | Hongli Wang,Qihai Huang |
Feeling trusted and employee
outcomes: the double-edged sword
of political behaviour
Hongli Wang
South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China, and
Qihai Huang
Keele Management School, Keele University, Keele, UK
Abstract
Purpose –Interpersonal trust between supervisors and subordinates plays an important role in
management. The impact of trust from management is through employees’perception and more specifically
their perception of being trusted, termed feeling trusted or felt trust. Politics is associated with the level of
trust of organizational members. So far, little is known how employees respond to feeling trusted with regard
to political behaviour resulting in employee outcomes. The paper aims to discuss this issue.
Design/methodology/approach –The paper develops a conceptual model to examine the double-edged
sword effect of political behaviour on employee outcomes.
Findings –The authors designed a two-wave survey to test the model. The analysis of 286 supervisor–employee
dyads found that feeling trusted is associated with supervisor-rated organization citizenship behaviour (OCB) and
overload reported by employees. Furthermore, political behaviour partially mediates the relationship between
feeling trusted and supervisor-rated OCB, which may be desired by both the supervisors and employees.
It also mediates the relationship between feeling trusted and employee perceived overload, which is undesired
by employees.
Originality/value –The current research aims to fill in the gap and answer this question: what is the role of
political behaviour in the relationship between feeling trusted and employee outcomes? Guided by an
“antecedents–behaviours–consequences”framework (Ferris et al., 1989), the paper develops a conceptual
model to examine how feeling trusted directly and indirectly influences employee outcomes, with the latter
being mediated by political behaviour.
Keywords Quantitative, Trust, Feeling trusted, Organization citizenship behaviour (OCB),
Political behaviour
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Interpersonal trust between supervisors and subordinates plays an important role in
organization effectiveness (e.g. Rousseau et al., 1998; Colquitt et al., 2007) and may constitute
an “organizing principle”(McEvily et al., 2003) or “control mechanism”(Bradach and Eccles,
1989). Since organizations are political arenas (Mintzberg, 1985), trust can have political
overtones (Culbert and McDonough, 1986; Farrell and Petersen, 1982), promoting political
behaviour requiring political skill. We use Valle and Perrewe’s (2000, p. 361) definition of
political behaviour as “the exercise of tactical influence which is strategically goal directed,
rational, conscious and intended to promote self-interest, either at the expense of or in
support of others’interests”.
It has been argued that a supervisor’s political behaviour can increase employees’
trust in that supervisor and encourage other positive responses from employees
which favourably influence employee outcomemeasures(DirksandFerrin,2002),
such as increased job satisfaction and citizenship behaviour (Ahearn et al., 2006;
Personnel Review
Vol. 48 No. 7, 2019
pp. 1653-1668
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0048-3486
DOI 10.1108/PR-11-2017-0368
Received 29 November 2017
Revised 21 April 2018
23 December 2018
Accepted 6 January 2019
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0048-3486.htm
Hongli Wang has received research grants from National Natural Science foundation of China
(No. 71872066); General projects of Humanities and social science of the Ministry of Education
(Nos Y9180140; 17JZD020); Central University Projects (No. D2180750).
1653
Feeling trusted
and employee
outcomes
Ammeter et al., 2002; Treadway et al.,2004;Ferriset al., 2007). However, employees
have the ability to recognize trust and to craft behavioural responses to build
favourable relationships with supervisors (Epitropaki et al., 2016). In other words,
employees can engage in political behaviourin response to trust. Furthermore, the impact
of trust from management is through employees’perception (Shalley et al., 2004), and,
more specifically their perception of being trusted (Salamon and Robinson, 2008),
termed “feeling trusted”or “felt trust”(Lau et al., 2014; Baer et al., 2015). So far, little is
known about how employees respond to feeling trusted by engaging in employee
political behaviour. The current research aims to fill this gap and answer the question:
what is the role of political behaviour in the relationship between feeling trusted and
employee outcomes?
Guided by an “antecedents–behaviours–consequences”framework (Ferris et al., 1989),
which links triggering or precipitating conditions, through political behaviour, to a range of
individual and organizational outcomes (Buchanan, 2008), the paper develops a conceptual
model to examine how feeling trusted directly and indirectly influences employee outcomes,
with the latter being mediated by political behaviour.
Following existing research on commonly researched employee outcomes of perceptions
of organizational politics (e.g. Chang et al., 2009) and, more specifically, the potential link
between feeling trusted and employee outcomes (Baer et al., 2015; Lau et al., 2014) and that
between political behaviours and outcomes in the workplace (e.g. Hochwarter et al., 2007;
Kimura, 2015), our research focuses on two important aspects, namely, organizational
citizenship behavior (OCB) and perceived overload. The conceptual framework of the
current study is as illustrated in Figure 1.
This paper makes th ree important contribution s to the literature. First, it iden tifies and
responds to a gap in the literature by focusing on an overlooked aspect of feeling trusted
as it relates to employee political behaviour. We hope that by linking feeling trusted and
employee political behavior, we will not only answer questions about their relationship
with each other but also raise awareness of an understudied area and stimulate new
research efforts. Meanwhile, earlier research about political behaviour infers that when
employees feel trusted, they do not perceive a need for political action and are
consequently less likely to engage in political behaviour (Farrell and Petersen, 1982).
However, we argue that felt trust could be interpreted as controlled motivation in the
workplace (Gagn éand Deci, 2005) and political behaviour from employees may then be a
response to feeling trusted. Second, this is among the first research ventures to examine
the mediating effect of political behaviour, linking trust and employee outcomes. It thus
addresses how political behaviour is associated with trust, responding to Culbert and
McDonough’s (1986) call for more attention to the “politics of trust”. Third, this study
extends the understanding that political behaviour can have both potential positive and
negative outcomes for employees by examining outcomes of perceived overload and
Supervisor-rated
employees’ OCB
Employees’ self-rated
Perceived Workload
Employees’
Political Behaviour
Employees’
Feeling Trutsted
Figure 1.
The conceptual model
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