Psychological empowerment and its relationship to trust in immediate managers

This paper examines the relationships between overall psychological empowerment, as well as its four aspects (meaning, impact, self-determination, and competence) as Spreitzer identifies, and bank managers' cognition and affect-based trust in their immediate managers. Certain demographic factors are taken into consideration as control variables to determine their effect on the relationship between psychological empowerment and trust. 220 bank managers in Ankara, Turkey participated in this study. The results show a significant relationship between cognition-based trust in immediate managers and overall psychological empowerment. Although cognition-based trust relates to meaning and competence aspects, affect-based trust is related to impact only. This study shows no relationship between any type of trust in immediate manager and self-determination. With demographic as control variables, only position has an impact on psychological empowerment.