What's trust got to do with it? Examining trust in leadership, psychological capital, and employee well‐being in a cross‐national context during Covid‐19

Nishat Babu*, Luke Fletcher, Shaun Pichler, Pawan Budhwar

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

We propose and test the idea that trust in the senior leadership team is needed to help overcome the potential widespread decrements to employee well‐being resulting from the Covid‐19 pandemic. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, we suggest that psychological capital mediates the relationship between trust in the senior leadership team's response to Covid‐19 and employee well‐being. We also examine the contextual relevance of line management's servant leadership alongside country differences (i.e., India vs. UK) in reinforcing the importance of trust in fostering psychological capital. We test our model in a time‐lagged survey study that follows employed individuals towards the early, middle, and later stages of the first wave of the pandemic in 2020. Results provide support for our model and indicate potential country differences. Our findings point to the significance of leadership, both at the senior level and at the line management level, in protecting employee well‐being during crises.
Original languageEnglish
Number of pages14
JournalEuropean Management Review
Early online date22 Feb 2023
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 22 Feb 2023

Bibliographical note

Copyright © 2023 The Authors. European Management Review published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Academy of Management (EURAM).

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Keywords

  • Covid-19
  • employee well-being
  • psychological capital
  • senior leadership
  • servant leadership
  • trust

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