A Multilevel Mediational Study on Relationships Between Trust Climate, Leader-Member Exchange, Trust, Mistrust, Communication and Task Performance

Abstract

Trust is an integral team component for establishing communication between team members and ensuring higher task performance. Importantly, the literature has not suggested how higher trust and lower mistrust in teams are established within organizations. The investigation of mistrust, proposed as being distinct from trust, is lacking in the current literature. Hence, this study proposes that trust climate and leader-member exchange are positively correlated with trust (but negatively correlated with mistrust), communication and job performance; that trust and mistrust mediate the relationships of trust climate and leader-member exchange with communication; and that communication mediates the relationships of trust and mistrust with task performance. For this study, 343 full-time white-collar employees (males = 56.3%) were recruited from 76 teams across various organizations. The study's findings supported all hypotheses, indicating the importance of the effects of both trust climate and leader-member exchange on team members in terms of trust, mistrust, communication and job performance. The findings also supported the view that trust and mistrust are integral team components between the leader and team members in achieving organizational objectives as a team.

Keywords: communication; leader–member exchange; mistrust; multilevel; task performance; trust; trust climate.