Trust Is the Hidden Engine of Public Sector Performance, Sierra Leone Study Reveals

What makes a civil servant in one of the world’s most resource-constrained bureaucracies go beyond the job description? A new study from Sierra Leone’s public sector offers a strikingly precise answer: it is not pay, not promotion, and not even participation itself, but a chain of psychological reactions that begins when employees are invited into the decision-making process and passes through affective trust, work engagement, and voluntary citizenship behavior before it finally shows up as measurable performance. The research, published in Frontiers in Psychology, tested this multi-stage model among 431 public sector employees and found that participation in decision-making had no direct effect on performance at all. Its entire influence traveled through an indirect-only pathway, meaning that if any link in the psychological chain breaks, the benefit of participation vanishes.

The study, led by Ibrahim Sallieu Jalloh of the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan together with Shixiang Li, Guangjin Zhang, H. M. Wasif Rasheed, and Rashid Khurshid, is the first of its kind in Sierra Leone’s civil service. The researchers combined Social Exchange Theory, which holds that workplace relationships operate on reciprocity, with Social Information Processing theory, which explains how employees interpret managerial practices as social cues. According to the exchange logic, when an organization gives employees genuine influence over their daily tasks, scheduling, and work environment, employees perceive this as benevolence and respect. They respond in kind, first with emotional trust in their leaders and organization, then with energetic investment in their work, and finally with discretionary behaviors that benefit the whole agency. The information processing logic adds that participation and authentic leadership function as signals that employees decode to decide what kind of attitude and behavior is appropriate in their workplace.

Methodologically, the research used a quantitative cross-sectional design. Data were collected from eight key public sector departments in Sierra Leone using a structured 62-item questionnaire distributed through a drop-off-and-pick-up procedure over one month. Of 538 questionnaires handed out, 470 were returned, and after screening, 431 were deemed usable. The sample was predominantly male at 82.8 percent and young, with 66.1 percent aged between 18 and 30. More than 85 percent held a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree. Notably, while 60.6 percent had served their organization for 5 to 10 years, 60.8 percent had worked under their current supervisor for 3 years or less. The researchers argue this tenure gap is theoretically critical: employees are anchored in the organization but their relational contract with a specific leader is still new, which makes the building of trust and the role of authentic leadership especially significant in these fresh dyads.

The analytical engine of the study was Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling, or PLS-SEM, run in SmartPLS 4. This variance-based technique is suited to complex conceptual models with many latent constructs, sequential multi-path mediation, and moderation, without imposing strict parametric assumptions. The researchers first validated the measurement model, confirming internal consistency with Cronbach’s alpha values ranging from 0.807 to 0.952, convergent validity with average variance extracted above the 0.50 threshold for every construct, and discriminant validity using both the Fornell-Larcker criterion and the more sensitive heterotrait-monotrait ratio, where all HTMT values fell below 0.90. Five items with weak loadings were dropped, leaving 57 indicators. Common method bias was addressed procedurally through anonymity and statistically through full collinearity tests and Harman’s single-factor check, which found the first factor explained only 34.2 percent of variance, well below the 50 percent cutoff.

The structural results read like a relay race. Participation in decision-making showed a very strong association with affective trust, with a path coefficient of 0.764. Affective trust then associated positively with work engagement at 0.573 and with affective commitment at 0.428. Work engagement associated with organizational citizenship behavior at 0.617, while affective commitment showed a complementary but weaker association at 0.200. Finally, citizenship behavior associated with employee performance at 0.633. The model explained 58.3 percent of the variance in affective trust, 52.9 percent in work engagement, 58.0 percent in affective commitment, 59.3 percent in citizenship behavior, and 40.1 percent in employee performance. Cross-validated redundancy was high for trust and engagement and modest for performance, which the authors attribute to unobserved institutional constraints that also shape in-role performance in public bureaucracies.

The sequential mediation tests are where the study delivers its most viral finding. The indirect pathway running from participation through trust, then engagement, then citizenship behavior, and finally to performance was significant with an estimated effect of 0.171. The parallel pathway through commitment was also significant but smaller at 0.041. When the researchers tested the direct path from participation to performance, it was non-significant, while the total indirect effect equaled the total effect, establishing full mediation. In plain terms, participation does not improve performance by itself. It works only when it first builds emotional trust, which then converts into engagement or commitment, which then expresses itself as voluntary extra-role behavior. The authors argue this unpacks the black box between managerial practice and performance outcome that has produced inconsistent findings across decades of participation research.

Authentic leadership, measured with the 16-item Authentic Leadership Questionnaire covering self-awareness, relational transparency, balanced processing, and internalized moral perspective, emerged as a critical boundary condition. The interaction between authentic leadership and affective trust was significant for both work engagement and affective commitment. Simple slope analyses showed that at high levels of authentic leadership, one standard deviation above the mean, the trust-to-engagement association strengthened from 0.452 to 0.694, and the trust-to-commitment association strengthened from 0.317 to 0.539. The researchers interpret this through Social Information Processing theory: authenticity is a salient social cue that shapes how employees interpret and express trust. When leaders are perceived as genuine, the conversion of trust into energetic involvement and emotional attachment is amplified. Interestingly, authentic leadership also showed direct associations with both attitudes, suggesting that even apart from trust, the mere presence of a genuine leader fosters engagement and attachment.

Why does this matter beyond Sierra Leone? The authors argue that in hierarchical, resource-constrained West African bureaucracies, participation is not just a human resource technique but a major organizational transformation. Employees accustomed to centralized power and high power distance may decode participative cues as more meaningful signals than employees in Western organizations where participation is routine. Affective trust also carries a built-in element of risk tolerance. In bureaucracies, speaking out or volunteering extra effort can carry professional risks including reprimand or exclusion. Trust acts as a psychological buffer that changes the employee’s risk calculus, allowing risk-averse civil servants to engage in the discretionary, innovative behavior that improves public service provision without fear of bureaucratic punishment. Given that formal material incentives are often restricted in the public sector, relational exchange becomes the primary currency of motivation.

The study’s practical implications are direct. Public sector organizations may consider strengthening participative mechanisms such as employee consultation, feedback, and involvement in relevant work-related decisions where institutional conditions permit. Leadership development emphasizing transparency, ethical conduct, openness, and consistency may amplify the conversion of trust into engagement and commitment. Initiatives supporting engagement, recognition, professional development, and constructive citizenship behaviors may form part of broader employee-management strategies. The findings suggest an integrated approach combining participation, authentic leadership, employee engagement, and supportive work conditions, adapted to organizational resources and structures.

The authors are careful about limits. The cross-sectional design cannot establish causal ordering, and employees who perceive themselves as high performers may subsequently report greater trust and engagement. Self-reported measures leave room for halo effects and social desirability, and the strong association between work engagement and citizenship behavior indicates conceptual and perceptual proximity that should be acknowledged. Convenience sampling limits external validity, and the gender imbalance reflects context-specific constraints in digital access and survey participation. Future research should employ longitudinal or cross-lagged panel designs, multi-source data including supervisor ratings and peer assessments, and objective performance measures such as civil service ratings or citizen satisfaction surveys. Testing the model across private enterprises and varied cultural settings would confirm whether the sequential social exchange process is universal. Still, for the first time, the invisible machinery connecting a manager’s invitation to participate and a civil servant’s measurable output has been mapped end to end, and trust sits at the center of it all.

Subject of Research: A social exchange perspective on employee performance in Sierra Leone’s public sector: the roles of authentic leadership, participative decision-making, and trust

Article Title: A social exchange perspective on employee performance in Sierra Leone’s public sector: the roles of authentic leadership, participative decision-making, and trust

Article References: A social exchange perspective on employee performance in Sierra Leone’s public sector: the roles of authentic leadership, participative decision-making, and trust. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1885753

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1885753

Keywords: social, exchange, perspective, employee, performance, Sierra, Leone, public, sector, roles, authentic, leadership