Dynamics of trust and fairness during organizational change: Implications for job crafting and work engagement

Employees’ perceptions of their leaders’ characteristics and actions can make or break organizational changes (e.g., Fugate, 2012; Rafferty, Jimmieson, & Restubog, 2013). Especially trust in leaders and fairness perceptions have been shown to play a key role for employees’ change reactions and subsequent adjustment (for reviews see Taylor, 2015; Van Dam, Oreg, & Schyns, 2008). While trust has been defined in numerous ways in organizational literature (see McEvily & Tortoriello, 2011), we use “trust” as an overarching concept that incorporates evaluations of leaders’ characteristics (e.g., integrity, competence, benevolence) and readiness to be vulnerable to the actions of another party (Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman, 1995). By fairness, we refer to employees’ perceptions of leaders’ actions regarding the fairness of procedures, explanations, treatment and outcome allocations during the change event (Ambrose & Schminke, 2009; Colquitt, 2001).

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