A groundbreaking study published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications has unveiled the complex influence of impersonal trust and technostress on organisational competitiveness, satisfaction, and employee commitment within small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Dr. Bencsik, Michalec, and Hargitai’s research, conducted across Hungary and Slovakia, dissects how varying resource intensities—whether capital-, labour-, or knowledge-focused—shape these dynamics. Their pioneering application of the Balanced Score Card (BSC) framework contextualizes intellectual capital growth through an intricate web of trust, stress, and employee attitudes, offering a transformative blueprint for modern organisational leadership.
At the core of the study lies impersonal trust—trust operating beyond personal relationships and based on organisational structures, processes, and technology reliability. This form of trust emerges as a critical driver of employee satisfaction and commitment, particularly accentuated in labour-intensive industries. Unlike traditional interpersonal trust, impersonal trust builds on the assurance employees have in the systems, policies, and leadership that govern their work environment. The researchers found that when impersonal trust is robust, employees demonstrate higher satisfaction, which, in turn, enhances their emotional and cognitive engagement with the organisation’s goals.
Capital-intensive firms exhibited a distinctly different dynamic. Here, operational characteristics such as organisational communication, management methods, and human resource practices significantly influenced employee commitment, though impersonal trust’s effect on satisfaction was comparatively muted. This suggests that while trust remains vital, its form and impact are modulated by the nature of resource dependencies within the company. Such differentiation prompts a reevaluation of standard human resource strategies that often apply universal models without tailoring approaches to industry-specific demands and organisational contexts.
Technostress—defined as the stress induced by continuous technological change and digital overload—was another pivotal element integrated into the investigation. With digital transformation accelerating rapidly across sectors, technostress poses considerable challenges to maintaining employee well-being and productivity. The study’s authors emphasize that technostress cannot be ignored in strategic management; rather, understanding its multifaceted interplay with trust and engagement is essential for fostering a resilient workforce. Ensuring digital literacy and promoting work-life balance emerge as critical managerial imperatives to mitigate the adverse consequences of technostress.
These nuanced insights align with and extend prior work by Aristovnik et al. (2016), but Bencsik and colleagues advance deeper by explicitly modeling the indirect pathways whereby impersonal trust influences not only satisfaction and commitment but also overall organisational competitiveness. This layered impact underscores trust’s centrality as a strategic asset that transcends individual-level relationships to encompass broader organisational culture and technology infrastructure. The implications for leaders are profound: cultivating impersonal trust systematically may be as crucial as interpersonal rapport in steering organisations toward sustainable competitive advantage.
The application of the Balanced Score Card framework provides a rigorous theoretical lens, situating learning and growth perspectives as foundational to intellectual capital development. Here, intangible assets like trust and employee well-being are operationalized as pivotal metrics informing strategic goals. The authors advocate that leadership must leverage BSC principles not simply for financial or operational targets but equally to integrate trust-building measures and technostress management into human resource and communication policies. This holistic approach promises to enhance organisational agility amidst rapid digital evolution.
From a policy perspective, the research suggests multi-pronged interventions to nurture a digitally literate and adaptable workforce. Governments and industry bodies are urged to incentivize continuous digital education and trust-centric leadership models. Emphasizing transparent governance and a reliable technology ecosystem can reinforce impersonal trust at scale. Additionally, initiatives supporting employee health—both mental and physical—are essential for counterbalancing technostress, thereby ensuring that workers remain engaged and productive despite technological disruptions.
In smaller firms, usually with less formalised structures than multinational corporations, building impersonal trust hinges on visible ethical leadership and a clear corporate vision. The study highlights that managers must not rely solely on personal trust cultivated through interpersonal connections but must also embed a trustworthy organisational culture to galvanize commitment. This dual focus on personal and impersonal trust equips SMEs to better navigate the fast-paced digital landscape, assuring workforce loyalty and sustained competitiveness.
Methodologically, the research uses Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), a robust statistical technique suited to exploring complex causal models involving latent variables like trust, satisfaction, and technostress. While this approach provides valuable explanatory insights, the authors acknowledge limitations such as the absence of global fit indices and potential biases from self-reported data gathered via online questionnaires. The sampling method may under-represent digitally excluded populations, who could experience more severe technostress but who are less likely to participate in online surveys.
The geographic scope—limited to Hungary and Slovakia—while enabling control for certain economic and historical similarities, constrains generalizability. Cultural and institutional variations undoubtedly influence perceptions of trust and technology interactions. Hence, future research is encouraged to broaden the sample range, incorporating diverse regions with differing technological maturity levels and cultural dimensions such as power distance and uncertainty avoidance. Cross-national comparisons will illuminate how these variables modulate the interplay of trust and technostress in organisational success.
Another critical consideration is the shift from cross-sectional to longitudinal study designs. Trust and technostress are inherently dynamic constructs, evolving with technological advances, economic cycles, and social shifts. Capturing these temporal fluctuations could reveal how relationships between employee attitudes and competitiveness change over time, especially in reaction to external shocks such as pandemics or market disruptions. Longitudinal analyses would provide stronger evidence for causal inferences and better inform intervention timing.
Moreover, the study relies on perceptual measures of competitiveness rather than objective organisational performance data. While employee perceptions offer valuable reflections of organisational climate, integrating quantifiable indicators like sales growth, profitability, or innovation rates would enrich understanding of how intangible factors translate into concrete business outcomes. Such triangulation between subjective and objective metrics presents a promising avenue for deeper exploration.
The authors also point out the influence of potentially omitted variables that could moderate the observed effects. Leadership style, team climate, and individual personality traits represent significant contextual factors warranting inclusion in future models. Expanding this research to encompass these dimensions will provide a more holistic view, enabling organisations to tailor trust-building and technostress mitigation strategies effectively.
Overall, this research heralds a paradigm shift emphasizing impersonal trust as a cornerstone of organisational success, especially as businesses grapple with ongoing digital transformation. By blending rigorous theoretical grounding with empirical analysis, the study equips leaders with actionable insights to foster resilient, engaged, and competitive workforces. Addressing technostress alongside trust integration within strategic human resource management promises to unlock untapped intellectual capital potential in today’s knowledge-driven economy.
Future work building on these findings could revolutionize trust management models and technology adoption frameworks, making them more adaptive to fast-changing environments. Cross-disciplinary collaborations between organisational psychology, information systems, and strategic management will be key to developing innovative solutions that enhance employee well-being and organisational performance simultaneously. The journey toward a trust-empowered, digitally fluent workplace is now underway, guided by this path-breaking research.
Subject of Research: The study investigates the impact of impersonal trust and technostress on employee satisfaction, commitment, and organisational competitiveness within SMEs, applying the Balanced Score Card framework.
Article Title: The direct and indirect impact of impersonal trust on organisational competitiveness.
Article References:
dr. Bencsik, A., Michalec, G. & Hargitai, D. The direct and indirect impact of impersonal trust on organisational competitiveness. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 12, 1596 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025-05993-4
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