Roger C. Mayer

The Effect of the Performance Appraisal System on Trust for Management: A Field Quasi-Experiment

Recent theoretical developments have enabled the empirical study of trust for specific referents in organizations. The authors conducted a 14-month field study of employee trust for top management. A 9-month quasi-experiment found that the implementation of a more acceptable performance appraisal system increased trust for top management. The 3 proposed factors of trustworthiness (ability, benevolence, and integrity) mediated the relationship between perceptions of the appraisal system and trust.

The trusted general manager and business unit performance: empirical evidence of a competitive advantage

Employee trust for the general manager is proposed as an internal organizational characteristic that provides a competitive advantage for the firm. This paper empirically examines the relationship between trust for a business units general manager and organizational performance. Trust was found to be significantly related to sales, profits and employee turnover in the restaurant industry. Managers who were either more or less trusted differed significantly in perceptions of their ability, benevolence and integrity. Copyright

Differentiating antecedents of organizational commitment: a test of March and Simon's model

Recent theory regarding the nature of organizational commitment suggests that viewing it as comprised of two dimensions, value commitment and continuance commitment, is of theoretical and practical value. This field study found the differential antecedents of these two commitment dimensions to be consistent with the March and Simon (1958) framework using the two-dimensional organizational commitment questionnaire from Mayer and Schoorman (1992). Organizational tenure, retirement benefits, education, and age were more highly correlated with continuance commitment, while felt participation, perceived prestige, job involvement, and role ambiguity were more highly correlated with value commitment. Analysis using LISREL 7 supported the pattern of relationships between the antecedents and the two commitment dimensions.

The Value of Common Perspectives in Self-Reported Appraisals You Get What You Ask For

This article uses the work of Smircich and Chesser on direct and meta-perspectives (i.e., points of view) to test the correspondence between self-reported and supervisory ratings of performance. Results from two field studies indicate a higher level of self-supervisor rating correlation when using a common perspective. Similar results were obtained using an alternative measure of rating correspondence. The results provide evidence that researchers using self-reports of performance as surrogates for archival performance data should ask respondents for their supervisors assessment of their performance rather than for their own assessment. The practical implications of these results for field research are discussed.

Exploring Attributes Of Trustworthiness: A Classroom Exercise

Interest in the topic of trust both within and between organizations has grown greatly in recent years. One key issue to understanding trust and how it can be more effectively fostered is understanding its causes. Based on the 1995 Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman model of trust, this article describes exercises that allow students to inductively discover the importance of a trustee’s ability, benevolence, and integrity to the assessment of trustworthiness. Parallel exercises are described that can be used to teach both trust between people and trust between organizations.

The effects of changing power and influence tactics on trust in the supervisor: A longitudinal field study

This paper presents a five-month longitudinal field study of the use of influence tactics and power on the development of employee trust within a small Midwestern US nonunion manufacturing company. Analysis of levels of trust in supervisors found that, as hypothesised, changes in trust levels were substantially related to increases in specific types of power use and influence attempts, most notably changes in referent power, expert power, and task-related supportive behaviors. Evidence also indicates that the development of trust is a reciprocal phenomenon, and that increased trust can lead to important outcomes.

Empowerment in veterinary clinics: the role of trust in delegation

ABSTRACT Several authors have suggested that trust is important to empowerment. This research develops the theoretical relationship between empowerment and trust. Trust, defined as a willingness to be vulnerable, was found to contribute to managers’ taking greater risks in their relationships with their employees through increased delegation of authority. Results show strong support that trust for an employee is a function of the employee’s perceived ability, benevolence, and integrity, as well as the manager’s propensity to trust.

Differences in trust between human and automated decision aids

Humans can easily find themselves in high cost situations where they must choose between suggestions made by an automated decision aid and a conflicting human decision aid. Previous research indicates that humans often rely on automation or other humans, but not both simultaneously. Expanding on previous work conducted by Lyons and Stokes (2012), the current experiment measures how trust in automated or human decision aids differs along with perceived risk and workload. The simulated task required 126 participants to choose the safest route for a military convoy; they were presented with conflicting information from an automated tool and a human. Results demonstrated that as workload increased, trust in automation decreased. As the perceived risk increased, trust in the human decision aid increased. Individual differences in dispositional trust correlated with an increased trust in both decision aids. These findings can be used to inform training programs for operators who may receive information from human and automated sources. Examples of this context include: air traffic control, aviation, and signals intelligence.

Trust in systems development: a model of management and developer interaction research in progress

Systems analysis and design (SAD) is often considered to be a technical task; indeed, in many cases exposure to SAD at the college level is an extension of a programming and database management course. Most information systems (IS) professionals would agree, however, that SAD requires communication skills, management skills, and organizational skills in addition to analytical and technical abilities. Further complicating the social dynamics of the situation, many systems are now developed by outsourcing partners, who work with management in virtual team environments. The authors recently met with the CIO of a major financial services firm, who stated that “Vendor management is the single most important skill … (my) IS management teams need to develop”. This research presents a theoretical framework for examining the relationship between management and systems developers, in particular applying a model of trust to explain behaviors from both partys perspectives. In addition, this research tests that framework within the context of a controlled setting.

Does Employee Treatment and Workforce Diversity Impact Corporate Innovative Efficiency

Using patents and citations per R&D dollar as measures of innovation efficiency, we find that corporate policies that result in better treatment of employees and a more pro-diversity culture, specifically treatment of women and minorities, enhance future innovative efficiency, even after controlling for endogeneity. Such positive effect is stronger in more innovative firms, more financially constrained firms, more undervalued firms, firms where employees are more valuable, firms in industries with longer employee tenure and firms with stronger governance. Better employee treatment and diversity policies also increase firm value via this positive effect on innovation efficiency. We suggest a channel through which employee treatment may enhance firm value.