Private Enterprise Executive Team Trust Model Evolution And Performance Mechanisms

Stabilization and effectiveness of TMT is a core management issue in all private enterprises. The effective measures involve building trust of the TMT member to the team, developing trust pattern adapted to the stage, and enforcing skill of interaction process or performance feedback in the process of strategic decision-making. By reviewing the TMT and trust literature, we found that the majority of previous TMT researches was concerned with statistical characteristic, and little research about TMT interaction behavior focuses on conflict issues. Since more and more evidences show that future research will direct to other factors related to interaction, of which trust is an important one. A series of related sub-studies were conducted on content construct, TMT behavior dynamics, trust building, stage characteristic of trust pattern, process mechanism of trust and organizational process, and performance feedback mechanism of trust development.In the first study, we used multi-cases of four typical private enterprises to comparatively analyze the key incidents representing TMT behavioral dynamics and trust, concluded the basic rules in the multi-factors system of TMT interaction process. We found that TMT behavioral dynamics making for trust building include risk taking, apt decentralization, shared strategy, and team cohesion, and that trust patterns of TMT include deterrence calculation-based trust, cognitive share-based trust, affective support-based trust, and value identification-based trust. There were some inherent relationships among TMT interaction stage, member characteristic, behavioral dynamics, trust patterns, behavior integration and corporate performance. Above-mentioned results established a preparatory construct framework for following studies.In the second study, trust building model based on TMT behavioral dynamics was put forward and validated in private enterprise. Based on literatures and interviews, TMT behavioral dynamics and trust questionnaires were developed, and delivered to top managers in medium-size private enterprise in Zhejiang Province and Jiangsu Provinces, Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis of 305 valid questionnaires in 102 enterprises revealed that TMT behavioral dynamics had three dimensions including risk-taking, team cohesion and apt decentralization; and TMT trust had two dimensions including task-oriented trust and relationship-based trust. The result of structural equation model revealed that TMT behavioral dynamics had significant affection on TMT trust building and team cohesion and apt decentralization had positively affected on task-oriented trust and relationship-oriented trust. More analyses about family and non-family enterprises showed that in non-family enterprises, TMT behavioral dynamics had significant affection on TMT trust building, risk taking and apt decentralization had positivelyaffected on task-oriented trust, team cohesion had positively affected on relationship-oriented trust and In family enterprise TMT behavioral dynamics' affection is not significant. Meanwhile, ANOVA analysis showed that TMT behavioral dynamics had significant differences in various stages and the levels of risk taking, team cohesion and apt decentralization in performing stage were higher than those in forming stage.In the third study, we used interview materials in 28 enterprises in Hangzhou, Taizhou and Wenzhou to make content analysis and conclude stage characteristic of trust pattern. After analyzing 14 high-performance enterprises, we found the trust patterns of high-performance teams showed different types of trust in different stages, namely, cognitive share-based trust in forming stage, affection support-based trust in storming stage, value identification-based trust in performing stage. Furthermore, we used questionnaires data from 54 high-performance teams to proof the results of content analysis, at the same time, results are as follows: task-oriented trust appeared descend trend from forming stage to storming stage, then showed ascend trend from storming stage to the performing stage, while relationship-oriented trust appears ascend trend in the whole stage.In the fourth study, the effects of TMT trust on firm performance were investigated by EQS model based on 305 valid questionnaires. The results indicated that TMT trust had no direct effects on firm performance while TMT trust significantly effected TMT behavioral integration which captured collaborative behavior, information exchange, and joint decision making and task-oriented trust significantly enhanced collaborative behavior and information exchange, and relationship-oriented trust significantly improved joint decision making. TMT behavioral integration was in favor of the improvement of corporate profit performance and growth performance, and information exchange positive effected profit performance and growth performance. The relationship between TMT trust and firm performance was fully moderated by TMT behavioral integration.In the fifth study, we used mixed experiment design of repeated measurement to predict the effect of performance feedback on trust development trends across stages. 256 part-time students who were managers in firms were divided into 80 groups, and they participated discussion and measurements in the two stages experiments. 78 groups valid data were collected. Our results showed performance feedback was positively associated with development of task-oriented trust and relationship-oriented trust. Low-performance feedback predicted descend trending of task-oriented trust and relationship-oriented trust development. Four performance feedback patterns of the combination of high-low level of performance feedback and inside-outside attribution modes had significant interaction effects on relationship-oriented trust and task-oriented trust. In low-performance feedback patterns, task-oriented trust showed significant descending trends; in high-performance and inside attribution feedbackpattern, it showed significant ascending trends. In low-performance feedback patterns, relationship-oriented trust showed significant ascending trends, and the speed of ascending trends in outside attribution pattern is faster than that in inside attribution pattern.Finally, the main conclusions of this paper were summarized. The theoretical progresses and practical implications of the present study were discussed, as well as the limitations of this study and the directions for future research.