When Trust Matters: The Moderating Effect of Outcome Favorability

The authors thank Keith Murnighan, Batia Wiesenfeld, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. Please address correspondence to Joel Brockner, Graduate School of Business, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027. The studies reported here evaluated the conditions under which the relationship between employees' trust in and support for organizational authorities will be more or less pronounced. We hypothesized that employees' trust in organizational authorities would be more strongly related to their support for the authorities when they perceived the outcomes associated with authorities' decisions to be relatively unfavorable. The results of three field studies, in markedly different contexts, supported this prediction. In essence, the establishment of trust seems to be a potent force in overcoming the otherwise adverse reactions that employees may exhibit in reaction to decisions yielding unfavorable outcomes. Theoretical implications for the literatures on organizational trust and organizational justice are discussed, as are some practical implications and limitations of the studies.'