关键词: 社会信任, 管理团队, 人事安排, 差序格局, 关系圈层

Abstract: How does social trust affect personnel arrangements within firms? While existing research has explored the relationship between social trust and various corporate behaviors, limited attention has been paid to how social trust impacts employment practices, such as the composition of management teams. By integrating institutional theory and social network theory, this paper proposes that social trust encourages organizations to move away from traditional practices such as nepotism and appoint individuals to management positions who do not have special personal connections. Furthermore, this effect manifests in the “differential mode of association” within the management teams, where, as social trust increases, managers are more likely to come from more distant circles. This effect also varies across stages of organizational development, and the presence of formal institutional systems, such as legal and judicial frameworks, can also partially substitute for the role of social trust. The analysis, using data from Chinese General Social Survey and Chinese Private Enterprise Survey, reveals that social trust increases the proportion of personnel without special relationships in management teams. As social trust rises, firms are more inclined to appoint individuals from more distant circles in the “differential mode of association”. However, this impact of social trust differs depending on the stage of development of the firm. In entrepreneurial firms with more resource constraints, the effect of social trust on reducing nepotism remains limited. Additionally, in regions with more developed formal institutions, the impact of social trust is weakened.

Key words: social trust, management team, personnel appointment, differential mode of association, circles of relationship