Abstract: Organizational trust has been viewed as one major factor for high organizational performance. But the effects of organizational trust on individual employees and organization are unclear, especially in Chinese companies. This study would fill the gap.
Eight hundred and one employees from 43 companies of 9 different cities across China answered our questionnaire. The results of exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) showed that the questionnaire from Cummings and Bromiley (1996) had sufficient reliability and validity.
At the individual level, the results of Hierarchical Linear Analysis showed that organizational trust was significantly positively related to job satisfaction and emotional commitment, and negatively related to turnover intention. The results also showed that organizational trust moderated the relationship between job satisfaction/emotional commitment and turnover intention. Specifically, when organizational trust is high, the relationship between job satisfaction/emotional commitment and turnover intention is stronger compare to when organizational trust is low.
At the organizational level, the results of Structure Equation Model showed that organizational trust was positively associated with perceptual organizational financial performance and the relationship was fully mediated by organizational innovation and organizational learning.
The main implication of the results was that we should pay more attentions to the level of organizational trust in human resources management. In the future, the complex influence mechanisms of organizational trust on individuals, teams/groups and organizations should be explored deeply and synthetically

Key words: organizational trust, turnover intention, organizational learning, organizational innovation, HLM (hierarchical linear modeling)