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

Thesis advisor: William F. StevensonAn 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