The Primary Manager Boss Trust Generation And The Role Of Process Research

During the economy and societal transformational period, companies in China have experienced great transform on both operational process and spirits. With the trend of being flat, trust in organizational context has become more and more important to both individual and overall performance of the organization. The employees who trust in their supervisor show more corporation with the decision and arrangement of their leader, which in turn leads to positive (attitudinal, behavioral and performace) outcomes. The issues of trust building has gained more and more interest of managers in China. As the base of strategy practice, middle manager has their performance completed by managing their subordinates, during which the subordinates' trust plays an important role.The dissertation aims to investigate the answer of two questions. The first question is how can leaders gain the trust from their subordinates? With considering the contextual factors where leadership works, the current question transfers into another expression, that is "how can different kind of leaders gain the trust from their subordinates in particular context?" Based on the established research about leadership and trust, we will try to explain the role leader values plays in the process; also we will apply the cognitive-affective perspective to explore the development and constitution of trust. The second question is what trust in supervisor means to the organization? Based on the cognitive and affective process of trust development, I will try to explain the mechanism trust works to improve subordinate's attitude, behavior and performance.Based on the reviews on the literatures focusing on action theory, trust theory, value theory and leadership theory, this dissertation clarifies its major objectives and main contents. After that, I formulate several theoretical hypotheses and construct theoretical and empirical models which include the main, mediating, moderating effects through the lenses of action theory, social exchange theory, symbolic interaction theory and role theory. Then I design the questionnaire with established scales from the literature. A pilot research is designed to finalize the questionnaire. Then I process the mass sample survey to collect data used to test the model. At last, I illustrate the research findings, theoretical contributions, managerial implications, possible shortcomings and implications for future research of the dissertation.The main conclusion are listed as follows: (1) The construct of trust in supervisor is constituted by cognitive-based trust and affective-based trust. Based on the analysis of cognitive and affective process of trust-building, the research argues that subordinats' trust in supervisor consists of two dimension: cognition-based trust in supervisor and affect-based trust in supervisor. Based on related literature I designed the instrument of trust in supervisor and has the scale confirmed via pilot test. The validity and reliability test suggests that the scale is accepted.(2) Leadership style predicts trust in supervisor. Based on the cognitive and affective process of trust building, I analyzed the process of leadership (transformal leadership and transactional leadership) and come up with the hypothesis between leadership style and trust in supervisor. The research supports the hypothesis that transformal leadership predicts both cognition and affect-based trust in supervisor with the process of social exchange and role interaction, while transactional leadership predicts cognition-based trust with the process of social exchange.(3) Leader's value orientation moderates the relationship between leadership style and subordinate's trust in supervisor. The relationship between transformational leadership and cognitive-based trust in supervisor is enhanced when leader holds high Yin value.(4) Trust in supervisor mediates the relationship between leadership style and subordinate outcome. To be detailed, affect-based trust in supervisor mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and subordinate attitude (affective commitment and turnover intention); cognition-based trust in supervisor mediates both the relationship between transformational leadership and task performance, and the relationship between transactional leadership and task performance.