The Effect of Teamwork Perception on Organizational Trust: The Mediating Roles of Psychological Empowerment and Spiritual Leadership

As organizational environments grow increasingly complex and uncertain-driven by rapid digital transformation, intensifying global competition, and post-pandemic shifts in work practicesteamwork perceptions have emerged as a critical determinant of organizational performance and longterm sustainability.This study investigates the effect of teamwork perceptions on organizational trust and examines the mediating roles of psychological empowerment and spiritual leadership.To achieve this, a survey was administered to employees at domestic universities, and the proposed hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling (SEM).The results indicate that perceptions of teamwork significantly enhance psychological empowerment, which, in turn, positively influences spiritual leadership.Spiritual leadership was also found to exert a significant positive effect on organizational trust.However, the direct effects of teamwork perceptions on spiritual leadership and organizational trust, as well as the direct effect of psychological empowerment on organizational trust, were not statistically significant.These findings suggest that efforts to strengthen organizational trust should adopt a sequential approach: first, cultivate employees' psychological empowerment, and subsequently foster spiritual leadership.The study offers practical implications for developing trust-building initiatives and leadership enhancement strategies within university organizations.The conclusions and implications are discussed in the final section.