Testing and comparing the causal model of team trust based on team, job and organization characteristics in employees with high and low predisposition to trust

The purpose of this study was to test and compare the causal model of team trust based on characteristics of team (job-adequate skills), work (role ambiguity) and organization (participative leadership) in employees with high and low predisposition to trust. The research method is descriptive-correlational through Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The sample of this study consisted of 319 employees of Khuzestan Water Exploitation, Production and Transmission Company who were selected by simple random sampling. Job-Adequate Skills (Jarvenpaa et al., 1998), Role Ambiguity (Rizo et al., 1970), Path-Goal Leadership (Indvik, 1988), Predisposition to Trust (Ashleigh et al., 2012), and Team Trust (Costa & Anderson, 2011) scales, were used to collect data. The proposed model was evaluated by Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) using AMOS-24 and SPSS-24 software. The results showed that the proposed model fits well with the data. Also, the results showed that direct paths of that job-adequate skills to team trust (β=0.56, p<0.0001), role ambiguity to team trust (β= -0.19, p<0.0001) and participative leadership in team trust (β=0.18, p<0.0001) were significant. In addition, the multi-group analysis results showed that there is no significant difference between the path graph and the regression coefficients of the models of employees with high and low predisposition to trust. Overall, according to the results of the study, having the skills required for the job, existence a participative leadership atmosphere and reducing the ambiguity of the roles and responsibilities of the team can increase the level of trust within the teams.