Trust and Respect at Work: Justice Antecedents and the Role of Coworker Dynamics

The authors address three overlooked issues regarding the well-established organizational justice and trust relationship: how an authority’s enactment of fair outcomes, procedures, and interactions “trickles down” to the development of coworker trust; how trust and respect represent distinct interpersonal outcomes; and whether coworker dynamics mediate these relationships. Using original survey data collected at two time points from 354 high school teachers, the authors investigate justice antecedents and the mediating role of coworker dynamics using structural equation modeling. The authors find that the effects of the authority’s (i.e., principal’s) distributive and procedural justice actions on coworker trust and respect do “trickle down” and are mediated through coworkers’ collective responsibility and work communication. In contrast, principal’s interpersonal justice has no effect on coworker dynamics or interpersonal outcomes, but coworker interpersonal justice enhances these outcomes. The results of this study also provide empirical support for the conceptual distinctiveness of trust and respect in the workplace.