The role of employee proactive behaviors in influencing supervisors’ trust in employees

• Main Author: HO, Ngai Meng
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2020
• Subjects: Employee proactive performance; individual task proactivity; team member proactivity; voice behavior; promotive voice; prohibitive voice; perceived trustworthiness; trust; Human Resources Management; Organizational Behavior and Theory; Organization Development
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/etd_coll/325; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1327&context=etd_coll
• Institution: Singapore Management University

In organizations, proactive employees make things happen. They anticipate, initiate, and drive meaningful changes for a better future. Such proactive behaviors can be manifested in different forms. Initiating work improvements and voicing for changes are examples of the different proactive behaviors commonly demonstrated by employees. Empirical studies have associated proactive behaviors at work with a range of positive workplace outcomes. However, only limited research has examined how proactive behaviors might be related to one particularly important outcome, trust, i.e., whether an employee’s proactive behaviors will influence the supervisor’s trust toward the employee. Accordingly, in this present research, I conducted two cross-sectional field studies, a pre-test, and the main study. The pre-test examined the psychometric properties of the measures and validated a measurement model in preparation for the main study. The main study examined the role of employee proactive behaviors in influencing the supervisor’s trust toward an employee in established supervisor-subordinate dyads. I hypothesized that such employee proactive behaviors are positively correlated to supervisor’s trust in employee. This research also explored psychological mechanisms and contextual factors that are likely to influence the effects of employee proactive behaviors on supervisor-to-employee trust. Here, I examined the potential mediating and moderating effects of variables inherent in the dyadic relationships between employees and supervisors. Specifically, I examined the potential mediating effects of perceived trustworthiness, and the potential moderating effects of leader-member-exchange (LMX) quality, the employee’s political skills, perceived constructiveness, and perceived prosocial motives, and the supervisor’s power distance and proactive personality. Additionally, I examined the contextual variable climate for initiative for its potential moderating role. This research found that employees who demonstrated proactive behaviors benefiting teams or work units were seen as having higher levels of perceived ability by their supervisors, ultimately influencing their supervisors’ trust in them positively. Additionally, this research found supervisors’ perceptions of employees’ ability in response to employees’ proactive behaviors (specifically prohibitive voice) were strengthened in high-quality LMX dyads and in environments where the climate for initiative was strong.