Journal of Management Development

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the trust repair efforts of top management within an organization specifically focusing on the impact of perceived organizational support and issue-selling success. Building on the theoretical trust repair literature, the authors bridge the gap between the laboratory dyad trust repair settings and the severe organization-wide trust repair settings.

Design/methodology/approach – The authors focus on one organizational context that experienced competency- and integrity-based trust violations between managers and top management. Surveys and interviews were conducted with 32 managers to capture trust in top management, issue-selling success rate, and perceived organizational support.

Findings – Results demonstrate that perceived organizational support is significantly and positively related to trust in top management. In contrast, issue-selling success rate is negatively related to trust in top management above and beyond the impact of perceived organizational support.

Practical implications – Trust repair approaches should include demonstrations of organizational support of employees by showing care and concern along with engaging employees in a change process that demonstrates top management commitment to repairing trusting relationships. In addition, top management trust repair efforts should focus on providing managers with the opportunity to engage in multiple issue-selling episodes.

Originality/value – The paper contributes to an existing research base by extending the approaches to repairing trust in organizational settings to specifically examine the impact of perceived organizational support and issue-selling.