The Trickle-Down Effect of Trust in Leader Among Top Executives on TMT Conflict Moderating Roles of Environmental Dynamism

This study applies the trickle-down effect theory to examine the effects of trust in leader and TMT trust on TMT conflict in hospitals. The moderating roles of environmental dynamism were also explored. Analytical results based on the survey responses of 486 executives from 139 hospitals show that TMT trust is a prominent mediator in bridging trust in leader and TMT task and relationship conflict. Nonetheless, the direct effect of trust in leader on TMT trust and the mediating effect of TMT trust are diminished under a high level of environmental dynamism. By exploring both the vertical and horizontal trust on both TMT task and relationship conflict in dynamic environments, our study complements prior researches, which typically underlined team trust while ignored the influence of contextual environments. By directly identifying TMT socio-cognitive characteristics (e.g., trust and conflict) in hospitals, the study also closes a significant gap in the upper-echelons literature, which tends to examine TMT demographic compositions as proxies of psychometric characteristics in business contexts.