Employee trust in organizations across cultures: a multilevel model

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In this chapter, we present a multilevel model that seeks to explain how the societal context affects organizations and individuals in the development of employee trust in the organization. To this end, we distinguish between modern versus neotraditional institutional systems, which we argue are mutually reinforcing with ideas related to individualism and egalitarianism versus in-group collectivism and hierarchism. We explain that these socio-institutional constellations have differential cross-level effects on individual-level variables such as cynicism and in-group collectivism, which are associated with lower levels of generalized trust in organizations. We further argue that modern systems would be more likely to afford organizational situationscapes characterized by empowerment, meritocracy, and long-term collaboration, and we propose such situationscapes may produce events that signal organizational trustworthiness to a greater extent. Finally, we offer that the societal as well as organizational variables would shape employees’ norms and schemas as to what constitutes typical and discretionary workways in their context, which in turn would serve as a benchmark in evaluating their particular trust-related organizational experiences.