Trust and psychological empowerment in the Russian work context

For Russian organizations to achieve global competitiveness it is suggested that they must adopt the most appropriate forms of leadership and organization to encourage the necessary competencies to achieve these ambitions. In this conceptual paper we illustrate that Russian organizational leaders can stimulate improved organizational effectiveness through their encouragement of psychological empowerment amongst managers. In so doing, Russian managers experience intrinsic motivation to take greater responsibility for organizational performance. We propose that managers’ experience of psychological empowerment is related to their trust in organizational leaders since studies suggest that trust is a critical psychological state that determines the success of the empowerment process. Whilst the concepts of trust and psychological empowerment have extensive literatures there is limited examination of the relationship between the two constructs in different cultural settings. Our contribution is to illustrate the importance of trust as an antecedent to psychological empowerment within Russian organizations, an environment characterized by high power distance and collectivism. A number of management implications derive from our study. ► Russian leadership style. ► Psychological empowerment. ► Cognitive and affect-based trust.