Why feeling trusted by managers can backfire

In this research study published in the Journal of Management Studies, our team partnered with a nonprofit organization in the USA and several companies in various sectors in China. We wanted to better understand by feeling trusted by managers is not always positive for employees. Indeed, for those employees who are confident in themselves, feeling trusted by managers can lead to higher work engagement and performance as well as higher lower work to home conflict. On the other hand, for those who have low confidence in themselves, the opposite is true; they experience lower engagement and work performance and increased work to home conflict.

Abstract: Employees respond differently to felt trust from their supervisor. We propose and test an organization-based self-esteem (OBSE)-contingent work engagement model of felt trust that predicts task performance and work-to-home conflict. We argue that employees use OBSE as a lens for interpreting felt trust, which has implications for their work engagement and subsequent task performance and work-to-home conflict. In Study 1 (a multi-wave survey in the USA), we found that employees who had higher (lower) OBSE responded more positively (negatively) to felt trust with higher (lower) work engagement. In Study 2 (a cross-lagged survey in China), we replicated the findings of Study 1 and further showed that felt trust had a positive (negative) relationship with task performance and a negative (positive) relationship with work-to-home conflict via work engagement among higher- (lower-) OBSE employees. Our model shifts the thinking on felt trust and has implications for felt trust theory and managerial practice.

Citation: Kong, D. T., Cooper, C. D., Peng, J., Crossley, C. D., & Lassu, R. A. (2025). An OBSE‐contingent work engagement model of felt trust: Implications for task performance and work‐to‐home conflict. Journal of Management Studies.

URL: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joms.13210

Check out the practitioner-friendly research story: https://managementstudiesinsights.com/trust-can-backfire-who-shines-and-who-struggles-when-feeling-trusted-by-a-manager/