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Does A Trusted Leader Always Behave Better? The Relationship Between Leader Feeling Trusted by Employees and Benevolent and Laissez-Faire Leadership Behaviors

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Abstract

The concept of feeling trusted, which has received far less attention from researchers than trusting, refers to the trustee’s awareness of trustor’s exposed vulnerability and positive expectations. Previous research has merely centered on employees’ feeling of being trusted by their leaders and its influences on their work-related outcomes, but there is little work about the impact of leader feeling trusted by employees. Grounded in social exchange theory and moral licensing theory, the current research centers on explaining why leaders’ sense of being trusted by employees brings about both positive and negative reactions and considering how leaders’ moral identity moderates these effects. One qualitative study (Study 1) and two quantitative studies (Study 2 and Study 3) were conducted to examine the benefits and drawbacks of leader feeling trusted. Results demonstrated that leader feeling trusted has two main consequences: (1) trusted leaders are more likely to have strong feelings of obligation toward their subordinates, and further engage in benevolent leadership behavior to repay the kindness; and (2) leaders’ sense of being trusted may be conducive to the accumulation of moral credits, thereby stimulating leaders to display laissez-faire leadership behavior. Additionally, our findings indicate that the leader’s moral identity would affect the decisions of the trusted leader to behave better or worse, which promotes benevolent leadership behavior through enhanced felt obligation, and lessens laissez-faire leadership behavior via reduced moral credits.

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Notes

  1. Though the theoretical model and hypotheses are on the basis of the qualitative results, we present the qualitative results after developing the hypotheses to make the paper easier to follow.

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Acknowledgements

The study was funded by the China National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (Grant No. 71425003), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 71572086).

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  1. Xingwen Chen and Zheng Zhu contributed equally to this article.

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  1. Faculty of Business and Economics, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China

    Xingwen Chen

  2. School of Business, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China

    Zheng Zhu & Jun Liu

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Appendix

Appendix

Some Key Interview Questions

  1. 1.

    What’s your opinion of trust and being trusted?

  2. 2.

    Do you feel that you are trusted by your subordinates, and why do you have this kind of feelings? Please give me some examples.

  3. 3.

    What are your feelings when you perceive your subordinates trust you?

  4. 4.

    What behaviors will you behave when you feel you are trusted by your subordinates? Please describe your motivation or psychological processes of why you engage in such behaviors.

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Chen, X., Zhu, Z. & Liu, J. Does A Trusted Leader Always Behave Better? The Relationship Between Leader Feeling Trusted by Employees and Benevolent and Laissez-Faire Leadership Behaviors. J Bus Ethics 170, 615–634 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-019-04390-7

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