Focusing the mediating role of institutional trust: How does interpersonal trust promote organizational commitment?

•We propose and compare two conceptually different models of the relations between different trust types and organizational commitment.•The main-effect model suggests that interpersonal trust and institutional trust directly and independently affect organizational commitment.•The mediation-effect model assumes that interpersonal trust influences institutional trust, which in turn affects organizational commitment.•Using survey data of Korean government officials, results of structural equation modeling (SEM) show the mediation-effect model is more plausible.•Findings from the Korean sample are successfully replicated in a sample of blue-collar workers gathered in the United Kingdom in 1973.