Maintaining Leader-Follower Relationships in the Aftermath of Trust Violations

The present paper explores how trust is violated and restored in the leader-follower relationship using a systematic grounded theory approach to discover and categorize the types of trust violations that occur and develops theory about how these different types of violations are processed by followers. The data are based on 38 in-depth interviews conducted in New Zealand and France. The conclusion is that there are two main types of trust violations: 1) dashed expectations in which the leader demonstrates incompetence and 2) power abuse. The former builds up over time and provides the opportunity for restoration whereas the latter is more likely to be a single event and create barriers to ever creating trust again