Managing Institutional Evolution to Increase the Likelihood of Success: Examples of Guidance from Chinese History

This research investigates the impact of interpersonal trust and leadership style on workplace isolation. It examines the moderating role of self-efficacy on the relationship of interpersonal trust, leadership style and workplace isolation. The study used media richness theory to explain the usefulness of communication media in virtual workplace. Purposive sampling technique is used to select respondents and collect data from five pharmaceutical companies operating in Pakistan. Total two hundred and twenty seven useable questionnaires were coded for final analysis after ignoring incomplete questionnaires. The repose rate is 87 % and hierarchical moderated regression is used to analyze the moderating impact of self-efficacy on hypothesize relations. Result shows that interpersonal trust and transformational leadership style have significant impact to reduce isolation perceptions of sales personnel. Results also provide evidence that interpersonal trust and leadership styles have stronger negative impact on workplace isolation when self-efficacy of salespersons is high. The study proposes development of interpersonal trust on organizational employees and use of transformational leadership in order to reduce work isolation behavior among employees particularly in the virtual work environment. The managerial implications and future directions are also discussed.