Supervisory trust and urgency culture: the role of temporal desynchronisation

Purpose This study aims to explore how miscalibrated supervisory trust may contribute to an urgency culture. Drawing on the trust calibration theory, it challenges the assumption that supervisory trust is uniformly and linearly beneficial and explains its unintended consequences. Design/methodology/approach This study adopts an integrative approach by combining insights from trust calibration, temporal coordination and leadership research to develop a framework explaining the impact of supervisory trust on team dynamics and urgency. This framework synthesises interdisciplinary scholarship on supervisory trust, coordination and team temporality. Findings Miscalibrated supervisory trust translates into team coordination breakdowns and laissez-faire behaviour amplifies this pathway by weakening oversight, making it harder to spot coordination issues early on. As a result, teams become more vulnerable to temporal desynchronisation, causing timing and cooperation to deteriorate. Over time, this leads to a stressful environment marked by constant rush and frequent fixes. Originality/value Prior research recognises the benefits of trust and the role of temporal coordination, but there is a gap in focusing on the unintended consequences of supervisory over-trust. This study contributes to the literature by identifying temporal desynchronisation as the linking factor between supervisory over-trust to team urgency culture, stating that trust can yield unintended paradoxical outcomes.