The role of trust in core team employees: A three-nation study

Purpose - The paper aims to fill a substantive gap in the trust literature by analyzing the mediating role of trust across different national groups. It presents a theoretical advantage, from the human resource management perspective, is that the research model was examined within the context of a global pharmaceutical firm characterized by a multicultural workforce. This allowed for controlling organizational culture. Design/methodology/approach - The research hypotheses were tested using data regarding only core team employees. Survey data obtained from employees of a pharmaceutical company in Israel, the UK, and Hungary. After the teams in each of the organization's three sites were mapped out, 205 employees working on 62 teams responded to the questionnaire resulting in a good quality of 61 percent response rate. Findings - The results of zero-order co-relational and confirmatory factor analysis revealed the two trust foci to be interrelated, but distinct, constructs. This finding suggests that employees can develop trust in specific individuals, such as superiors, and generalized representatives, such as the organization. The mixed models analysis suggest that there are significant differences between the Israeli, UK, and Hungarian employees for three of the research variables: Trust in the organization, turnover intentions, and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Originality/value - The paper is one of the first cross-national empirical studies of its kind to demonstrate the role of trust as a mediator between organizational justice and employee work attitudes and behaviors. In addition, it is one of the first cross-national studies on trust that controlled both industrial characteristics and organizational culture.