The Influence of Experiential Grounding on Attributions of Initial Trustworthiness at Work

Abstract

An important and basic question, highly-relevant to managerial practice, which has been only partially asked and answered in the organizational literature, concerns the development of initial trust among co-workers. In this dissertation, I develop and test the theoretical idea that individual reflection upon affectively-charged work experience will have considerable influence on present attributions of initial trustworthiness to co-workers. The theory is primarily based in the scholarly literature on attribution theory, affective forecasting and trust concepts. Empirical results from testing across three distinct vignette-based scenarios show that the valence of relevant indirect experience is significantly and positively related to the level of initially attributed trustworthiness. Two experiential indicators, relational self-efficacy and organizational identification, are also found to be situationally and positively related to the level of initially attributed trust. The discussion details important implications for scholarship and management practice.