Research On Influencing Factors Of Members’ Trust In Leaders And Its Development Within Entrepreneurial Teams

It has become increasingly popular that amount of businesses are carried out in the form of entrepreneurial teams under the background of vigorously promoting entrepreneurship in China. Member’s trust in the leaders takes an important role on entrepreneurial teams and new enterprises’ success. Taking entrepreneurial teams as the research object, this study explored what influences the member’s trust in the leaders and how this trust develops. First of all, conducting questionnaire survey, we examined the impact of team-leader’s trusted behaviors and leader-member exchange to member’s trust in the leaders, as well as the possible moderating effect of start-up stages between them. And then using the case method, we, on the one hand, exploratorily studied the development of members’ trust in the leaders and the key driving elements, on the other hand, compared the possible differences between group-type and the core-leading entrepreneurial teams.According to the analysis results of survey data of59entrepreneurial teams, among the team-leader’s trusted behavior, which are influence factors from the individual level, the integrity behavior, equity behavior and coaching behavior have a positive influence on the cognition-based trust, while integrity behavior, coaching behavior and empowering behavior have a positive influence on the affect-based trust. The results of moderating effect show that team-leader’s trusted behavior has different influences on members’ trust in the leaders in different stages of the new ventures. In start-up initial period, equity behavior has the greatest effect on the members’ cognition-based trust in the leaders, and empowering behavior has the greatest effect on the members’ affect-based trust in the leaders.In the start-up development period, integrity behavior has the greatest effect in the members’ cognition-based trust in the leaders, and empowering behavior has the greatest effect in the members’ affect-based trust in the leaders. As the influence factors from the dyadic level, leader-member exchange, have more positive influence on the members’ affect-based trust in the leaders. With the development of new ventures, this effect is gradually increased.The results of the case study from four entrepreneurial teams show that, in start-up initial period, the members’ cognition-based trust in the leaders have greater effect than affect-based trust in the core-leading entrepreneurial team, while the members’ affect-based trust in the leaders have greater effect than cognition-based trust in the group-type entrepreneurial team. With new ventures from the initial to development period, both affect-based trust and cognition-based trust improve gradually in the core-leading entrepreneurial team, but the improvement of affect-based trust is more obvious; in the group-type entrepreneurial team, the affect-based trust haven’t changed much, but the cognition-based trust dropped.Overall, this study examined the impact of the influence factors from individual level and dyadic level on the members’trust in the leaders under the background of entrepreneurial team through the questionnaire survey and case study method, also examined the moderating effect of start-up stage between them. We then explored the development characteristics of members’ trust in the leaders in different types of entrepreneurial team. In the end, we discussed the empirical research conclusions, and objectively analyzed the limitations in the research process and the prospect for future research.