The impact of situational vulnerability on the development and erosion of followers' trust in their leader Yael Lapidot a, ⁎ , Ronit Kark b,1 , Boas Shamir c,2 a The College of Management, Tel Aviv, School of Business Administration, 7 Yitzhak Rabin Blvd. Rishon Lezion 75190, Israel b Bar-Ilan University, Departments of Psychology and Sociology, Ramat Gan, 52900, Israel c Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Jerusalem, 91905, Israel Abstract Leaders' behaviors manifesting ability, integrity and benevolence play a central role in enhancing followers' trust in the leader. The current paper examines the relative impact of these leader behaviors with respect to two unexplored issues: the differences between the building and erosion of subordinates' trust in their leader, and the differences between situations in which the subordinate are highly vulnerable or less vulnerable as a result of the leader's actions. On the basis of content analysis of 988 critical incidents collected from 733 cadets in officers training courses, we compared the relative importance of the different leadership behaviors in trust-building versus trust-erosion incidents and in situations varying in their magnitude of followers' vulnerability. The findings show that behaviors reflecting leader ability and integrity were more salient in trust-erosion incidents and that behaviors reflecting leader benevolence were more salient in trust-building incidents. Greater subordinate vulnerability increased the importance of behaviors reflecting leader integrity or ability (depending on the nature of the vulnerability) compared to behaviors reflecting the leader's benevolence, and vulnerability increased the likelihood that trust would be eroded. We discuss the implications of these findings for both theory and practice. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Trust; Leadership; Vulnerability Considerable attention has focused in recent years on trust in organizational authorities. Several authors have claimed that trust in organizational authorities increases support for such authorities, commitment to the authorities, members' voluntary acceptance of the authorities' decisions, and members' willingness to behave in ways that help to further the goals of the organization (e.g., Brockner, Siegel, Tyler, & Martin, 1997; Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Moorman, & Fetter, 1990; Tyler & Degoy, 1996). From a related perspective, many writers on leadership in organizations view subordinates' trust as an essential component of effective leadership (e.g. Bennis & Nanus, 1985; Conger & Kanungo, 1998; Dirks & Ferrin, 2002; Zand, 1997). According to Conger & Kanungo (1998) “…leading implies fostering changes in followers through the building of trust and credibility. In turn, trust enables and builds enduring The Leadership Quarterly 18 (2007) 16 – 34 www.elsevier.com/locate/leaqua ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +972 3 9634242. E-mail addresses: ylapidot@colman.ac.il (Y. Lapidot), karkro@mail.biu.ac.il (R. Kark), msshamir@mscc.huji.ac.il (B. Shamir). 1 Tel.: +972 2 5702940; fax: +972 2 6434820. 2 Tel.: +972 2 5883360. 1048-9843/$ - see front matter © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2006.11.004