Date of Award
Summer 2025
Document Type
Open Access Dissertation
Department
Moore School of Business
First Advisor
M. Audrey Korsgaard
Abstract
Trusting behavior—discretionary risk-taking with another party—is the primary means of facilitating productive workplace relationships (Zand, 1979; Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman, 1995). Yet, little empirical evidence exists to explain what happens after employees engage in trusting behavior, but before outcomes materialize—otherwise termed the “vulnerability phase” (Ballinger, Schoorman, & Sharma, 2024: 2). To address this neglect, I develop a theoretical framework that positions vulnerability as a core psychological state within the trust process, shaped by trustors’ cognitive appraisals of risk severity and uncertainty. Drawing from research on stress and well-being, the framework also identifies coping as a key response to vulnerability, moderated by various contextual features. Utilizing a four-wave survey of 636 Army servicemembers, I test a moderated-mediation model proposing that an employee’s experience of vulnerability, generated from their trusting behavior, leads to unintended, negative consequences. The results find modest support for the model.
Rights
© 2025, Sam Dylan Strizver
Recommended Citation
Strizver, S. D.(2025). The Other Side of Trusting: The Implications of Vulnerability as a Core Component of Organizational Relationships. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/8518