Abstract

This research seeks to extend the literature of trust by examining whether the amount of trust that employees have in their supervisors is contingent upon the ethical system of belief utilized by their immediate supervisors. To help answer this question, it is hypothesized that employees have a greater degree of trust in immediate supervisors practicing the deontological ethical system of belief than in those practicing the teleological ethical system of belief. This study begins the search for the moral frameworks that are the antecedents of trust in immediate supervisors. The results indicate that practicing a deontological approach to ethics may stimulate a greater degree of employee trust in immediate supervisors than a teleological approach; therefore, the ethical system of belief held by immediate supervisors affects his or her employees.