The importance of trustworthiness: a systematic literature review in budget slack

The trustworthiness factor is crucial in the relationship between employees, i.e. between superiors and subordinates, because it can increase cooperation and alleviate agency problems. Previous studies have shown that aspects of trustworthiness can reduce managers’ opportunistic behavior, for example budget slack (BS). This study aims to clarify the concept of trustworthiness, which is useful in informal management control systems to reduce BS behavior through a structured review of previous studies from 2003 to 2023. This study was designed in a systematic literature review based on the journals of six journal publishers from the Scopus, EBSCO and Google Scholar databases. The keywords used for searching consist of BS, Integrity (I), Benevolence (B), Ability (A) and Trustworthy (T). The four keywords, I, B, A and T, are then filtered based on articles that correlate with BS. Overall, this review shows that the trustworthy motive of managers can directly reduce opportunistic behavior in BS. Although only a few empirical studies were found in the literature review, the three trustworthy aspects, integrity, benevolence and ability, have been proven to reduce BS behavior. In other words, the successful application of the manager’s trustworthiness concept as part of an informal management control system (e.g. through organizational culture) in the future is expected to reduce dysfunctional BS behavior.