I am currently working toward my Doctor of Technology with a concentration on Leadership and Innovation. This endeavor results in a great deal of reading and writing.
This afternoon I had to write an analysis of the subject article. After submitting the analysis, I thought it might be worth sharing the writings during this pursuit of continued education.
So...here is my first one I will share.
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“Examining the Effects of Trust in Leaders: A Bases-and-Foci Approach”
Joseph L. Brochin
Purdue University
The article that is the subject of this analysis is Examining the Effects of Trust in Leaders: A Bases-and-Foci Approach. It is authored by Jixia Yang and Kevin W. Mossholder and published in The Leadership Quarterly, Volume 21, Issue 1, February 2010, Pages 50-63. Approximately four years prior to this publication, in May 2006, a previous version was presented. This occurred in Dallas Texas, during the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology annual conference.
The authors focus on the effect of work outcomes based on an employee’s trust in their organizational leadership. Specifically focusing on trust with immediate supervisor and the higher-level management of the organization. The authors point out the importance of trust between employees and their leadership and identify it as an important psychological factor.
The authors start with the typical introduction, then outline the bases and foci of trust in organizational leaders. They then use bases and foci to predict trust outcomes. The authors then outline the methods used in the research and then the results. They conclude with a discussion of the research.
From their own research, they identify two psychological methods that underlie an employee’s trust attributes. One process is cognitive trust, which they state is instrumental in nature and is directed at the ability, dependability, and integrity of the leader. The second is effective trust, which they explain as being relational and is about the personal bonds between employee and leader. They also identify four variants of these trust attributes which are; (Yang & Mossholder, 2010) “in-role behavior, extra-role behavior, affective organizational commitment, and job satisfaction.” (pg. 55)
The authors developed two hypotheses. One hypothesis was related to their belief that cognitive trust in a supervisor is more closely related to the in-role behavior variant. Their second hypothesis was a belief of the strong relationship between the extra-role behavior variant and affective trust in a supervisor.
Although the authors seemed to obtain a fair sample of the overall population with regard to age, gender, education and other demographic data, the research does not dig far enough into how cognitive trust and affective trust in organizational leadership are influenced by the demographics of the respondents.
(Hatipoglu & Inelman, 2017) “examines the relationship between demographic diversity principles and evaluations of employee voice.” (pg. 1) and confirmed that trust is, in fact, an important factor and that gender and age played a factor in the trust of the organizational leadership.
The authors dilute the potential of the research when they control the impacts of demographic information in their research. Employee demographics will play a critical role in their cognitive and affective trust, not only in the direct supervisor but of the upper management as well.
If forming additional hypotheses for this paper, one would be that cognitive trust plays a more important role than affective trust between employee and leadership. The second would be that demographics play a critical role in the cognitive and affective trust between employee and leadership.
The demographic backgrounds of both employee and leader is a significant factor in overall trust processes and variants of trust. It is a sociological fact that factors such as gender, age, race, and ethnicity result in different life and work experiences by individuals. Leaders are not exceptions to demographic influence. As such, it can be argued that the demographics of not only the employees, but supervisors should be looked at and considered regarding the variants of in-role and extra-role of both cognitive and affective trust.
More research should be done in these areas, to not only ensure diversity in the workforce but to find a way to build trust across the diverse workforce.
Hatipoglu, B., & Inelman, K. (2017). Demographic diversity in the workplace and its. The International Journal of Human Resource, 1-25.
Yang, J., & Mossholder, K. W. (2010). Examining the effects of trust in leaders: A bases-and-foci approach. The Leadership Quarterly, 50–63.