Trust has been widely recognized as a key
enabler of organizational success.
Prior research on organizational
trust, however, has not distinguished between the potentially
varying bases of trust across different stakeholder groups
(e.g., employees, clients, investors, etc.). We develop a
framework that distinguishes among organizational stakeholders
along two dimensions: intensity (high or low) and
locus (internal or external). The framework also helps to
identify which of six potential antecedents of trust
(benevolence, integrity, competence, reliability, transparency,
and identification) will be relevant to which type of
stakeholder. We test the predictions of our framework using
survey responses from 1,296
respondents across four stakeholder groups from four different
organizations. The
results reveal that
different antecedents
of trust are indeed relevant for different stakeholder types,
and provide strong support for the validity of the intensity and
locus dimensions.