The Influence of Experiential Grounding on Attributions of Initial Trustworthiness at Work

• Main Author: Roussin, Christopher Jay
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Boston College 2008
• Subjects: Experience; Initial Trust; Trust
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/714

Thesis advisor: William F. Stevenson === An important and basic question, highly-relevant to managerial practice, which has been only partially asked and answered in the organizational literature, concerns the development of initial trust among co-workers. In this dissertation, I develop and test the theoretical idea that individual reflection upon affectively-charged work experience will have considerable influence on present attributions of initial trustworthiness to co-workers. The theory is primarily based in the scholarly literature on attribution theory, affective forecasting and trust concepts. Empirical results from testing across three distinct vignette-based scenarios show that the valence of relevant indirect experience is significantly and positively related to the level of initially attributed trustworthiness. Two experiential indicators, relational self-efficacy and organizational identification, are also found to be situationally and positively related to the level of initially attributed trust. The discussion details important implications for scholarship and management practice. === Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2008. === Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. === Discipline: Organization Studies.