“Distrust Spillovers: Exploring the Role of the Socio-Cultural Context “
by S. Arzu Wasti
Sabancı University
Place: MA-330
Abstract
Despite its importance, trust violation has remained relatively understudied in organizational research (Ferrin & Gillespie, 2010; Lewicki & Brinsfield, 2017; Schilke et al., 2023). This presentation focuses on trust violation in the context of coworker relationships. Specifically, it explores whether trust violations lead to distrust spillovers in the form of higher generalized distrust and whether this is moderated by relational mobility, a socio-ecological construct defined as the opportunity to form new relationships and the freedom to leave undesired relationships or groups in a given social context (Yuki, 2007). In Study 1, critical incidents of trust violation collected from working adults in two low relational mobility (Singapore and Türkiye) and one high relational mobility (US) contexts were content analyzed. The quantitative findings revealed higher levels of distrust spillover in low relational mobility contexts, while the qualitative findings suggested that low relational mobility contexts afforded higher baseline expectations of support from coworkers. In Study 2, the follow-up survey study from American and Turkish working adults revealed a complex pattern: while expectations for instrumental support showed a main effect for coworker closeness and country (US>TR), expectations for prosocial unethical behavior and emotional support were significantly higher for casual coworkers in Turkey. These findings suggest that relational mobility influences the perception of the workplace as a normatively bounded collective versus a voluntary network, which in turn explains cultural differences in support expectations. The implications for distrust spillovers as well as ethical climates will be discussed.
Bio
Prof. Dr. S. Arzu Wasti is a faculty member at the Sabancı Business School. After earning her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Business Administration from the Middle East Technical University in 1992 and 1994, she completed her Master’s in Human Resources Management at Purdue University (USA) in 1996, followed by her PhD at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1999. Dr. Wasti has published numerous studies on topics such as organizational commitment, workplace trust, sexual harassment, and incivility in prestigious international journals. Her research has been supported by organizations like the National Science Foundation and TÜBİTAK. Dr. Wasti who serves on the editorial boards of several distinguished journals has received the TÜBİTAK Science Award in 2019 and the ODTÜ Mustafa Parlar Foundation Science Award in 2020.
