Supervisor trustworthiness and subordinates' willingness to provide extra-role efforts

A laboratory experiment was used to determine the separate and joint effects of behaviors denoting supervisor trustworthiness on subordinate willingness to provide the supervisor with extra-role efforts. Results indicate that a supervisor's demonstration of benevolence toward the subordinate outweighed the supervisor's work-relevant ability and his or her benevolence toward the subordinate's peers in positively influencing subordinate willingness to provide the supervisor with extra-role efforts. Also, benevolence toward the subordinate's peers moderated the effect of benevolence toward the subordinate, whereby benevolence toward the subordinate had a reduced positive effect when the supervisor was not benevolent toward the subordinate's peers.