How organizational trust impacts organizational citizenship behavior: Organizational identification and employee loyalty as mediators

Yuping Dai; Yuk Ming Tang; Weinian Chen; Jie Hou

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.996962

How organizational trust impacts organizational citizenship behavior: Organizational identification and employee loyalty as mediators

Front Psychol. 2022 Nov 15:13:996962. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.996962. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Yuping Dai¹, Yuk Ming Tang², Weinian Chen¹, Jie Hou³

Affiliations

¹ Faculty of Business, City University of Macau, Macau, Macao SAR, China.
² Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China.
³ School of Foreign Languages, Huaibei Normal University, Huaibei, Anhui, China.

Abstract

Research on the influence of organizational trust (OT) on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) of employees has been conducted for years, but the influence of internal mechanism for OT on OCB is not well studied. Based on social exchange theory and organizational identity theory, this paper explored the OT on the OCB and revealed the chain-mediating role of organizational identification (OI) and employee loyalty (EL) from both employees' cognitive and psychological perspectives. The research employed a two-wave and multi-source strategy to conduct hypothesis validation with 305 validated questionnaires of Chinese enterprises. The results of the empirical analysis show that: (1) OT has a significant effect on OCB; (2) OI plays a mediating role between OT and OCB; (3) EL plays a mediating role between OT and OCB; and (4) OI and EL have a significant chain-mediating role between OT and OCB. The results of this study have deepened the understanding of organizational trust and have important practical implications for improving organizational citizenship behavior, organizational identification, and employee loyalty.

Keywords: Chinese enterprises; employee loyalty; organizational citizenship behavior; organizational identification; organizational trust.