Antecedents Of Upward Trust And Its Effects On Human Resource Integration In The Context Of M&A

In the increasingly competitive environment,more and more organizations integrate resource,gain competitive advantages and achieve development by implementing merger and acquisition,therefore,academic researchers attach great importance to issues in M&A context,among which upward trust(trust in leader)is one of the most important issues.From previous research,we’ve already know that the boundary of groups appears and group membership plays an important role as soon as M&A process completed.In this circumstance,leaders of the newly-formed organization play vital roles for the success of M&A,whether leaders can gain trust from subordinates is important since upward trust can effectively enhance employees’acceptability of change,thus promoting human resource integration after M&A.Since employees from different organizations gathered together.in M&A organization,it is hard but important for members to form upward trust.Past research has already concerned with the differential treatment between in-group members and out-group members in M&A context,pointed out how the group identity characteristics of leaders would influence the level of upward trust.Based on Social Identity Theory(SIT),we conduct this study to explore the antecedents of upward trust from the perspective of leaders’ identity characteristics and the influence of upward trust on the level of human resource integration This paper proposed four interrelated studies to clarify the antecedents of upward trust from theory exploration to empirical test,and how upward trust eventually impact on human resource integration of newly-formed organization after M&A.Study 1 is an experimental study.Typical for in-group members,we choose the situation that leaders and their subordinates came from the same organization before M&A has carried out.In this study,we put forward that even if leaders and their subordinates came from the same organization before M&A,the degree of upward trust may be varied with the implementation of M&A.On one hand,from the perspective of group identity characteristics,leader group prototypicality is a determinant of trust for leaders.In the organization after M&A,the degree of leader group prototypicality represented the possibility that the leaders would obey the norms of groups and guarantee the benefits of in-group members.we proposed that leader group prototypicality is positively correlated with upward trust;on the other hand,in the aspect of organizational identity characteristics,we think that leader’s organizational identity salience would negatively moderate the causality between leader group prototypicality and upward trust.Study2 is also an experimental study.Corresponding to Studyl,we simulate a typical situation of out-group members,namely:leaders and subordinates came from the different organizations before M&A has carried out.We propose that goal interdependence between leader and subordinates is the antecedent of upward trust.We focus on the general situation in the new-formed organization that there are different subgroups in the organization,considering that it is difficult for each subgroup to form a coherent goal as soon as M&A complete,and the own goals of every groups may relate with others’ cooperatively or competitively,thus goal interdependence between leaders and subordinates represents the group identity characteristics.We proposed that cooperative goal interdependence between leaders and subordinates is positively related with upward trust,while competitive goal interdependence has negative effect on upward trust from the perspective of group identity characteristics.Besides,we still concern leaders’ organizational identity salience in the aspect of organizational characteristics.High degree of leaders’organizational identity salience will weaken the boundary of groups and strengthen the common organizational identity shared by all subordinates and leaders,which would negatively moderate the causality between goal interdependence and upward trust.Study3 is a questionnaire study.we bring in psychological distance as a mediation.Psychological distance is an evidence to distinguish in-group and out-group members.Besides,by distributing questionnaires among employees who worked in organizations that get through M&A in recent five years,we examined and refined the hypothesis mentioned in Study1 and Study2,verified the validity of the experimental research.The results show that:leaders’ group characteristics have influence on upward trust,while psychological distance mediates this relationship.Moreover,this study also focused on how organizational identity characteristics of leaders,namely:organizational identity salience,have moderating effects.Study4 is also a questionnaire study,since that human resource integration is a symbol of M&A success,we conduct this study to explicit how upward trust have effect on the level of human resource integration,which strengthen the special significance of upward trust in M&A context.From the perspective of self-concept orientation,upward trust means the formation of relational-level of self-concept,which is dyadic relationship between leaders and subordinates,while organizational identification forms the collective-level of self-concept.The results show that upward trust has positive influence on the level of human resource integration,while subordinates’ organizational identification mediates this relationship.We also conducted that leaders’ organizational identity salience moderates the relationship between upward trust and subordinates’ organizational identification.In the whole paper,the four studies above focused on how both the group identity characteristics and organizational identity characteristics of leaders influenced the upward trust,and how upward trust finally influence the success of human resource integration,which advanced the current research carried in the new-formed organization after M&A context.