۱- Introduction

۲- Theoretical background and hypothesis development

۳- Method

۴- Study 1

۵- Study 2

۶- Discussion

۷- Conclusion

References

Abstract

Emerging research appears to suggest that feeling trusted by management can facilitate employees’ organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). However, it is possible that feeling trusted can have negative effects on hospitality employees. In this paper, we draw on social exchange theory and self-determination theory to examine how feeling trusted can lead to potentially negative consequences for hospitality employees. We tested the hypotheses using data from two different studies. Study 1 used a time-lagged research design to collect a sample of 349 employee-supervisor dyads in a chain of six economy hotels. Study 2 was designed to generalize the results by examining a sample of 509 employees in healthcare hospitals. The results show that employees’ feeling trusted has a direct effect on employee compulsory citizenship behavior (CCB). Furthermore, feeling trusted has an indirect effect on CCB mediated by employee organization based self-esteem (OBSE) and felt obligation, with the latter having a stronger effect. Our research contributes to the literature by examining the dark side of feeling trusted and the mechanism of how feeling trusted influences employee outcomes.

Introduction

In the hospitality industry staff are important for providing good service and building guest loyalty (Chi and Gursoy, 2009). Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), in particular, has been considered to be an important factor needed by the hospitality industry to build customer satisfaction and loyalty and enhance service quality. Recent research suggests that, in the hospitality context, trusting the employee is crucial to enhance OCB, and trust has naturally been a managing strategy used to motivate the actions of employees (Six and Sorge, 2008). Different from trusting, being trusted – defined as the perception that management willingly accepts its vulnerability to the subordinate’s actions (Baer et al., 2015; Lau et al., 2014) – has received great attention in recent years. Although the existing research has explored the intuitive relationship of how being trusted affects employee behavior, available research so far ignores the possible dark side of feeling trusted (Baer et al. (2015) found that feeling trusted is unwelcome in certain circumstances and can become a ‘poisoned chalice’ for one or other of the parties involved (Skinner et al., 2014). Thus, it is not clear whether feeling trusted is related to negative outcomes and, if so, how. Feeling trusted is normally realized through the perception of reliance and disclosure by supervisors, for example, delegating important tasks and sharing sensitive information (Lau and Lam, 2008).