A Study Of State Suspicion And Its Effects In Organizations

Suspicion is a ubiquitous concept in our life and academic aspects.In.the organizations nowadays,the time frame for building trust with different stakeholders is becoming smaller and smaller due to the complexity and fast pace of social interaction in the information age.The construct or definition of suspicion can be found in many scientific subjects such as psychology,human factor,manamgent(mostly information system and marketing)and public administration,etc.However,within the specific domain of organizational behavior,there is no clarified concept or consolidated definition as well as systematic research literature.Most of the time,suspicion is investigated in the trust literature and bound with the concept of distrust,sometimes they are misused and replaced with each other.As for the trust research,there has been a debate on whether trust and distrust are the two polar of one continuum or two distinct construct just like satisfaction vs dissatisfaction.The dissertation is oriented to take a new cognitive and emotion based perspective to rethink about the debate,specifically take a new look at the construct of trust,distrust and suspicion.A deductive research approach and experimental as well as empirical approach are adopted in the dissertation in order to understand the debate by introducing the construct of state suspicion.The first two chapters introduce the theoretical background of trust and suspicion.In the dissertation,the perspective of theory of planned behavior has been adopted in order to achieve a more systematic review on the literatures of trust.Then based on the review of trust,it is easier and clearer to summarize and distinguish the concepts of distrust and state suspicion.With the theoretical foundation laid in the first two chapters,an experimental study and two empirical study were conducted to examine the construct validity of state suspicion and also test some hypothesizes.In the first sub-study,an orthogonal experimental design of five scenarios has been used to test the relationship between trust/distrust,certainty/uncertainty and suspicion.In the second sub-study,a nomological network based test has been conducted in order to establish the construct validity of state suspicion.In the last sub-study,an empirical test on hypothezed research model has been conducted in order to further test the robustness of the new construct:state suspicion.The research model in this sub-study is about leader impression managenet and employee voice bevhaior.Our main discoveries are listed as follows:(1)the experiment results indicate that individuals will generate more cognitive consumption under the suspicion state.Also,the ambiguity aspect of suspicion can be separated from the concept of trust and distrust.(2)the first empirical study provide evidence that the discriminate validity of state suspicion among similar construct such as trust,trustworthiness.(3)individual's cognitive style is related differently with trust and suspicion.(4)the mediating roles of trust and suspicion on the relationship between leader impression management perception and employee voice behavior are quite different,indicating a varied underlying mechanism that is worth further study.Finally,theoretical and managerial implication as well as limitations and future research are discussed in the last chapter.This dissertation aims to make contributions in these ways:first,this dissertation distinguished the concepts of trust,distrust and state suspicion theoretically.Second,an analysis of the nomological netword of state suspicion has bee adopted in order to establish the construct validity of such concept and extends the literature of trust and suspicion.Third,this dissertation responds to the newest call of studying the trust by considering the factors of emotion and state.The fourth,this dissertation empirically explored the multiple mediating mechanism between leader impression management and employee voice behavior which extends the literatures of the relevant constructs.