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Supply chain has long faced a persistent workforce shortage. To help both organizations and the field create environments that are more conducive to employee retention, the authors investigate the outcomes of supply chain employee trust in their supervisor.

Applying person-environment fit theory, the authors evaluate the well-established antecedents to trust in supervisor ability, benevolence and integrity (ABI) relative to person-job (P-J) fit and person-vocation (P-V) fit of US supply chain employees.

Confirmatory factor analysis indicates that ABI is best modeled as dimensions of a second-order formative trust construct rather than as its antecedents. However, PLS-SEM provides somewhat unconvincing support for the impacts of ABI-trust. Instead, qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) delineates that all three ABI dimensions are not always needed for P-J and P-V fit in supply chain. Some employees respond to affective-based (i.e. benevolence) trust and others to cognitive-based (i.e. ability and integrity) trust.

The QCA results offer specific recommendations for supply chain organizations to enhance employee trust in supervisors to succeed in the struggle for labor.

The results counter extant trust theory, encouraging scholars to consider ABI as distinct dimensions of trust. The study also demonstrates the importance of considering QCA in supply chain research to meaningfully expand contributions to theory and practice.

Drawing on the perspective of trust and individual differences, this study developed and tested a model to identify the effect of leaders' demonstrated humility on employees' feedback-seeking processes. Specifically, it examined the role of feedback orientation and employees' trust in supervisors in the way humble leadership affects employees' feedback-seeking behavior (FSB).

The moderated mediation model was tested using matched surveys from 175 Chinese employees and their direct supervisors from various organizations.

The results revealed that humble leadership could predict employees' FSB through supervisor trust. Moreover, feedback orientation not only moderated the relationship between supervisor trust and employees' FSB but also moderated the indirect effect of humble leadership on employees' FSB via supervisor trust.

These findings can provide guidance to corporate organizations on how to motivate employees to actively seek feedback to improve their job performance.

Guided by the social exchange theory, this study aims to examine the mediating relationship among trust in employee, felt trust, and trust in supervisor, and these trust-related factors’ direct and indirect effects on frontline hotel employees’ customer-focused voice and silence.

Survey questionnaires were distributed to collect 307 valid paired supervisor–employee responses from 32 hotels in Taiwan. Structured equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses.

First, treating trust-related variables as two-dimensional constructs (reliance and disclosure), the results confirmed that reliance-based trust in employee increases trust in supervisor through felt trust. Second, supervisor trust in employee was generally stronger than employee felt trust. Third, while felt reliance and disclosure-based trust in supervisor were found to promote customer-focused voice and discourage silence, such opposite effects on voice and silence were not observed for reliance-based trust in employee, felt disclosure and reliance-based trust in supervisor. Fourth, indirect effects of trust in employee and felt trust on voice and silence through trust in supervisor received partial support.

This study provides business insights into managing frontline hotel employees’ voice/silence behaviors through trusting relationships.

This study verified employee felt trust as a mediating mechanism in their trusting relationships with supervisors as well as supervisors’ roles in initiating trust in vertical dyads. Using a two-dimensional trust measure, our analysis illustrated the differential effects of trust-related variables on customer-focused voice and silence, shedding light on the double-edged effects of felt trust and trust in supervisor as well as the conceptual distinction between voice and silence.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between workplace learning and organizational commitment with the mediating role of cross-cultural adjustment and the moderating role of supervisor trust for the case of foreign workers in a new cultural setting.

This study uses structural equation modeling to analyze a sample data of 367 Vietnamese and Philippine workers in Taiwan.

Results show that workplace learning enhances foreign workers' organizational commitment. Cross-cultural adjustment is found to have a mediating effect in the link between workplace learning and organizational commitment. Furthermore, supervisor trust moderates the link between cross-cultural adjustment and organizational commitment. In addition, supervisor trust moderates the indirect effect of workplace learning on organizational commitment through cross-cultural adjustment.

Prior literature often focuses on expatriates who are high-skilled employees. This study investigates low-skilled workers who come from less-developed country working in a more developed economy. This study is one of the first researches examining the issue of foreign workers' commitment in new cultural environment. Our findings shed a new light to the effect of workplace learning on organizational commitment. Our findings also help to clarify the roles of cross-cultural adjustment and supervisor trust into the workplace learning–organizational commitment relationship. This study provides implications for researchers and managers regarding to management and development of foreign workers for local organizations.

Drawing on social learning theory and social information processing theory, the purpose of this study is to examine how perceived supervisor’s voice behavior relates to employees’ own voice behavior both directly and indirectly through trust in supervisor. In particular, this study also investigates the moderating role of gender in the relationship between trust in supervisor and employee voice behavior. Further, this study proposes that gender moderates the indirect effect of perceived supervisor’s voice behavior on employee voice behavior via trust in supervisor.

The proposed hypothesis was tested by using hierarchical regression analyses and Hayes’ PROCESS macro.

The results show that perceived supervisor’s voice behavior is positively related to an employee’s own voice behavior and trust in supervisors. In particular, trust in supervisors mediates the relationship between perceived supervisor’s voice behavior and employee’s own voice behavior. Additionally, the relationship between trust in supervisor and employees’ voice behavior was stronger for female employees.

The current study investigates employees’ perception of immediate supervisor’s voice behavior that encourages employees to speak up, thereby providing a more nuanced understanding of the factors that facilitate employee voice behavior. In particular, this study advances the understanding of how and why employees’ perception of supervisors’ voice behavior relates to employees’ voice behavior by examining the mediating and moderating factors.

This study aims to use a social exchange perspective to investigate the influence of organizational justice on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB).

Survey and interview data were collected from a sample of insurance firm sales representatives in Taiwan. Structural equation modeling was deployed to explore the relationship between organizational justice, trust, supervisor–subordinate guanxi and OCB.

The findings offer important theoretical, managerial and social implications for life insurers’ human resource managers.

Organizational justice is a primary influence on OCB, which is connected with the underlying mediating mechanism of trust (trust in supervisor and trust in subordinate) and supervisor–subordinate guanxi (i.e. off-the-job activities).

Subordinates can enhance guanxi with their supervisors to create a more harmonious working environment, creating mutual trust. The results suggest that supervisor–subordinate guanxi is based on long-term social exchange. How to balance fairness and efficiency is an import question for decision-makers.

This study’s examination of the role of trust and supervisor–subordinate guanxi in mediating the relationship between organizational justice and OCB expands the organizational behavior literature into a different industry (life insurance) and cultural context (Taiwan).

The purpose of this paper is first, to assess the generalizability of the Integrative Model of organizational trust to the development of workplace trust in upward, downward, and lateral relationships. Second, it examines the relative importance of ability, benevolence, and integrity in predicting trust in supervisor, subordinate, and peer. Design/methodology/approach – Human resource professionals (n=187) from two sources (a human resource professionals’ organization and a large Canadian corporation) responded to an online survey.

The results indicate that the integrative model of organizational trust was applicable to trust in supervisor, subordinate, and peer. The results also suggest that the relative importance of ability, benevolence, and integrity in predicting trust differed according to the trustor‐trustee dyad.

A potential limitation of this study is that data regarding trust in each of the three referents (supervisor, subordinate, and peer) were obtained from the same raters. These findings need to be replicated with multi‐source data.

Given the necessity of trust for positive cooperative relationships, a better understanding of how to foster trustworthiness among individuals would be a benefit to society.

The findings provide valuable information for the development of effective and efficient trust‐building strategies for upward, downward, and lateral workplace relationships.

The paper describes a study which simultaneously examined trust in supervisor, trust in subordinate, and trust in peer. It also assessed the relative importance of the antecedents of trustworthiness across referent dyads using the relative weight analysis procedure strategy.

The present study aims to ascertain the relationships between subordinate moqi and leader behaviors, by primarily discussing how and when subordinate moqi is associated with leadership empowerment.

A self-report study was conducted by recruiting 334 employees from 13 firms. All concepts were rated on a seven-point Likert-type response scale. Linear regression analysis (conducted in MPLUS 7) was conducted to verify the hypotheses.

First, subordinate moqi showed positive association with empowerment. Second, trust-in-supervisor mediated the relationships between subordinate moqi and empowerment. Third, subordinates' power distance orientation (PDO) could moderate the subordinate moqi – leader empowerment relationship. When subordinates reported higher PDO, the relationships between subordinate moqi and empowerment were more robust; likewise, subordinate moqi would have more significantly indirectly impacted empowerment via trust-in-supervisor.

Though researchers have discussed the impacts of subordinate moqi on subordinates' outcomes, the impact of subordinate moqi on supervisors' attitudes or behaviors remains unclear. The relationships between subordinate moqi and supervisor empowerment behaviors are empirically ascertained by emphasizing the leader-subordinate dyadic process. The findings here suggested that subordinate moqi boosted subordinates' trust-in-supervisor, and moqi would also predict the behaviors of leader empowerment. This study extended the PDO literature by identifying the moderating role of PDO in the subordinate moqi – leader empowerment behavior relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to illuminate the mechanism which can explain and predict subordinates’ deferential behaviour in China.

Data were collected using mail surveys. The study used two sources of data (supervisor and subordinate) obtained via two separate sets of surveys. In total, 600 questionnaires were distributed to subordinate–supervisor dyads employed in a variety of organizations, and 441 dyad-level questionnaires were collected.

The paper revealed that supervisors’ political mentoring (PM) moderated the strength of the mediated relationships between a supervisor’s trust in the subordinate and the subordinate’s deference to supervisor via supervisor–subordinate guanxi. Furthermore, the direct interaction effect of a supervisor’s trust and PM influenced the subordinate’s deference to supervisor only when the level of PM was low.

This study clarifies the mechanism by which supervisor’s specific behaviours affect subordinate’s deference to supervisor, and explores how supervisor–subordinate dyad creates a reciprocal relationship. The research indicates the unique effect of supervisor’s PM in Chinese organizations, and reinforces the importance of considering supervisor’s trust in the subordinate.

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.

The paper develops a conceptual model to examine the double-edged sword effect of political behaviour on employee outcomes.

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.

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.