How do values matter in the relation between organizational trust and performance? The case of China

• Main Author: JIANG, Lu
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2023
• Subjects: Organizational trust; personal value; Confucian value system; Chinese culture measurements; trust in the supervisors; work effort; performance; Business Administration, Management, and Operations; Organizational Behavior and Theory; Organization Development
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/etd_coll/472; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/etd_coll/article/1470/viewcontent/GPBA_AY2018_PhD_Jiang_Lu.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Trust in organizations has been demonstrated and discussed widely in research in Western cultures. With China’s rapidly developing economy, more and more Western managers work in China now, while an increasing number of Chinese managers work overseas. This makes research on the way trust in organizations operates in Chinese culture an important topic. This study contributes to the literature from the perspective of the way values matter in the relation between organizational trust and performance in China. This research proposes that in the context of China, employees’ and supervisor’s Confucian value system affects the trust in the supervisor positively, which in turn, enhances work effort and consequently, affects job-related performance and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) positively. Some research has observed that relationship conflict affects the trust in the supervisor and work effort adversely, and therefore, it is proposed further that relationship conflict moderates the relation between the employees’ and supervisor’s Confucian value system and trust in the supervisor, as well as between trust in the supervisor and work effort. Before the proposed model was tested, this study sought to develop a new set of scales to measure the Confucian value system following Hinkin’s (1998) approach. A literature review was conducted and no specific measurement for the Confucian value system manifested in the work context was found. To develop a set of such scales, pilot interviews were conducted with a sample of eight individuals across China to determine their knowledge of the Confucian value system and the way these values are manifested in behaviors in their daily life and work. In the second step, an original Confucian value system scale was developed with 30 items using a deductive approach from the literature. In the third step, a survey of 500 individuals in China was conducted and subsequently, a 12-item scale from the 30 items in Study 1 was created that is both reliable and valid to measure the Confucian value system manifested in the work context. The proposed model was tested with the newly developed scales, and all of the proposed hypotheses were supported except for the moderating effect of relationship conflict in Study 2. This study contributes to the literature by developing a set of measures of the Confucian values system manifested in the work context and also provided evidence that such values are important in trust in the supervisor in China.