Hwee Hoon Tan

Trust in coworkers and trust in organizations.

The authors proposed a modified model of organizational trust that incorporates trust in 2 foci: coworkers and organizations. They found a relation between the 2 foci. The authors also found that trust in organizations mediates the relation between trust in coworkers and organizational outcomes of affective commitment and performance. These findings suggest that it would be meaningful to examine the relations between other foci of trust to better understand how different domains interact and how such exchanges eventually lead to desired organizational outcomes.

Organizational Citizenship Behavior and Social Loafing: The Role of Personality, Motives, and Contextual Factors

The present study integrates the literature on social loafing and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). The authors examined the roles of personality, motives, and contextual factors in influencing the work behaviors of OCB and social loafing. In a sample of 341 individuals working in project groups, with data collected over 3 time periods, the authors found that conscientiousness was negatively related to social loafing. They also found the known positive relation of OCB with conscientiousness. Felt responsibility was negatively related to social loafing. The authors found no significant relations between social loafing and OCB motives.

Antecedents of Trust Across Foci: A Comparative Study of Turkey and China

Instead of importing Western models of interpersonal trust, we adopted a qualitative approach to understand trust relationships from indigenous cultures perspectives. We examined trust relationships directed at different foci in the organization (supervisor, peer, and subordinate) in two different countries, Turkey and China. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 Turkish and 30 Chinese employees working for a variety of large-scale organizations located in Istanbul, Turkey and Shenzhen, China. We report the content analysis of trust-building critical incidents narrated by the respondents. While the general antecedents of Ability, Benevolence, and Integrity were found to exist in both countries, Benevolence, with its culture-specific manifestations, played a very important role in trust-building across multiple foci in both countries. We also found that trust relationships in these two contexts tended to go beyond the professional domain, and to involve sharing of personal time, information, and space. Drawing on this evidence, we propose a trust-building process that is more affective in nature and which straddles both work and non-work domains.

Antecedents of Supervisor Trust in Collectivist Cultures: Evidence from Turkey and China

The premise of much research on dyadic trust building within organizations has been framed around the relationship as it emerges in the work context. Such models, including the seminal Mayer, Davis and Schoorman (1995) model of dyadic trust, have been applied to contexts outside North America without a careful understanding of the distribution of social practices and everyday situations in such contexts. This chapter examines culture-specific workways as a starting point for understanding subordinates’ trust in their supervisors in collectivistic cultures. Workways refer to the pattern of workplace beliefs, mental models and practices about what is true, good and efficient within the domain of work. Drawing from interviews with 60 organizational respondents from two countries, Turkey and China, we propose that the multiplexity of work relations needs to be taken into account as both personal and professional life domains are important for understanding supervisor-subordinate trust in collectivist cultures.

Trust building with Chinese host country nationals

Purpose - – Integrating the literature on trust building and cultural intelligence, the purpose of this paper is to understand how expatriate managers build trust with their host country nationals (HCNs) in China. Design/methodology/approach - – Qualitative data collected via extensive interviews with 12 expatriate managers and 34 HCNs from seven multinational companies in Shanghai. Findings - – The authors find that expatriate managers and HCN managers build trust via competence/ability at the onset. The trust relationship becomes stronger over time with the development of affect-based trust via cultural intelligence of the expatriate managers. Research limitations/implications - – Implications for theory and practice following the results are discussed. Originality/value - – This study used the cultural intelligence perspective to understand the trust building process. In addition this study interviewed both sides to the trust dyad; the expatriate manager and the HCN manager. Hence, it provides perspectives from both sides of the trust building process, one of the first studies to do so.