Account Of Trust Research Articles

On the concept of trust

Considerable diversity is exhibited by current definitions of the concept of trust. This paper argues that there may nevertheless be an identifiable core to the concept. On the basis of an analysis of five scenarios in which some agent x trusts some other agent y, it is suggested that two beliefs—here called the ‘rule-belief’ and the ‘conformity-belief’—form the core of the trusting attitude. The informal account of trust presented here identifies the kinds of modalities that would figure in a modal-logical specification of the conditions under which one agent can be said to trust another.

Why Is Trust Important?

There is now a bewildering array of literature about trust, written from a variety of disciplinary orientations.2 However, much of the literature skirts around the fact that trust is closely tied to some ethical judgements. When we discuss trust and trustworthiness, our language spans the gap between fact and value, and that is sometimes forgotten when emphasis is given to the instrumental benefits of trust and trustworthiness. It is important to remember that sometimes trust is good not as a means to an end, but as something that is intrinsically important. Similarly, trustworthiness is inherently part of being a good human being, and focussing on trustworthiness as a means can impede attaining it either as an end or a means. A ‘balanced scorecard’ approach to evaluating organisational performance needs to take account of trust and trustworthiness as components of performance, as something of inherent value, not just as means to it. Further, in many contexts the assessments we make in coming to decisions require us to make judgements about trust and trustworthiness as a basic consideration, without coming to prior judgements about distinct ‘factual’ issues. This emerges in workplace negotiation, when negotiators have to make decisions about how frank and open to be with other parties.

Trust in managed care organizations.

Two basic criticisms of managed care are that it erodes patient trust in physicians and subjects physicians to incentives and pressures that compromise the physician's fiduciary obligation to the patient. In this article, I first distinguish between status trust and merit trust, and then argue (1) that the value of status trust in physicians is probably over-rated and certainly underdocumented; (2) that erosion of status trust may not be detrimental if accompanied by an increase in well-founded merit trust; and (3) that under conditions of managed care the physician's commitment to traditional medical ethics cannot serve as an adequate basis for merit trust. Next, drawing on an analogy between managed care organzations and politics, I argue that (4) the most appropriate basis for merit trust in managed care is a conception of organizational legitimacy that includes procedural justice, empowerment of constructive criticism within the organization, and organizational accommodation of the noninstrumental commitment to patient well-being that is distinctive of medical professionalism. I then explore the conditions necessary for robust competition for merit trust among managed care organizations and indicate the kinds of public policies needed to facilitate such competition. Finally, I show how the account of organization-based merit trust can accommodate the special fiduciary obligation of medical professionals, without indulging in the delusion that it is the physician's fiduciary obligation always to provide all care that is expected to be of any net benefit to the patient.

Medical Savings Account Plans

Medical savings account (MSA) plans are a form of medical insurance that combine high-deductible medical insurance with a tax-free personal trust account (used to pay medical bills not covered by insurance). MSA-like plans have been in existence in US companies for over 10 years, in Singapore since 1984 and in South Africa since 1994. MSA plans have a distinct advantage over other forms of medical insurance in that the locus of medical decision making remains with the patient and doctor; in addition, market forces are brought to bear on cost, availability and quality of medical services.

Practical Issues involved in Trust Accounting

Practical Issues involved in Trust Accounting

Regulation of Aboriginal Labour in Queensland: Protectors, Agreements and Trust Accounts 1897-1965

In 1903, the Queensland government began to regulate the employment of Aborigines by requiring a contract of employment between employers and their Aboriginal workers and the establishment of a trust account in the Aborigines' names into which part of the wages were to be paid. The system which was designed to prevent exploitation by employers became a device for the paternalist control of Aborigines by the State. The system was later closely linked to assimilation policies. The system provided protectors with extraordinary powers over the lives of working Aborigines. The State could sanction not only where Aborigines could be employed, but how they could spend their wages. This article examines the origins, development and administration of the trust account system in Queensland from its inception until its abolition in the 1960s.

Trustworthiness

Trustworthiness

Performance Evaluation for the Individual Investor: Trust Account Guidelines

The keys to achieving a useful performance evaluation are proper calculation of rate of return, proper choice of measurement period, analysis of market and nonmarket risk, benchmark choice, style consistency, consideration of taxes, and identifying actual investment management fees. In addition, trust portfolios, because they can involve several beneficiaries, may involve more than one time horizon, competing investment objectives, and different risk tolerances.This presentation comes from the Managing Assets for Individual Investors conference held in Chicago, Illinois, on February 28 - March 1, 1995.

Humanisation, democracy and trust: The democratisation of the school ethos

A democratic state is characterised by more than its particular principles and institutions; its citizens must have the democratic virtues and attitudes. One such important attitude is trust, as commentators on the current attempts to create democratic institutions in the USSR emphasise. The paper gives an account of social trust and also the important, though problematic, role that distrust plays in a democracy. Finally the paper considers how the school can instantiate social trust in its own ethos.

If You Can't Trust Your Lawyer....?

One problem with lawyers lying is that deceit is facially repugnant to a system that aspires to find the truth in human conflict and intercourse. The lawyer's role, both as an advocate and as an officer of the courts, is critical to achieving that mission and enhancing public confidence in the administration of justice and the integrity of the process of law. How, then, can lawyers lie, or engage in deceit? Very simply, they should not; but obviously more than a few lawyers do it. One reason, perhaps, lies in the reality that our justice system is a forum politic that accommodates, like the diverse society it serves, ambiguity, exaggeration, cleverness, and, on occasion, something less than the whole truth and nothing but the truth. This tolerance to deception is encouraged by the profession's institutional civility. Seldom is a fig called a fig, or a shyster a shyster. No, our euphemisms are wonderfully polite: frivolous conduct, or a lack of candor; or law-office failure; or, heaven forbid, a peculation, a defalcation, or a negative balance in a law firms's trust account.

Aboriginal Trust Accounts in Queensland: How 'Protection' Became 'Oppression'

Aboriginal Trust Accounts in Queensland: How 'Protection' Became 'Oppression'

Problems of administration with trust accounts established in Australia to augment funds available for rural research and jointly financed by primary producers and the commonwealth government

A method of financing additional rural research by primary producers (farmers), believed to be unique, has been established in Australia since the Second World War. Trust Accounts have been established progressively under legislation by the Commonwealth Government at the request of ten different primary industries. Into these Trust Accounts, one for each industry, have been placed the contributions: (a) from primary producers, which are raised by levy, usually on a basis of annual output, and (b) from the Commonwealth Government, which usually match those from primary producers on a dollar for dollar basis. The administrative arrangements for the Wheat Research Trust Account are described in this paper and some of the problems that have been encountered are discussed.

Australian Government Initiatives in Aboriginal Education

Since the 1967 Referendum the Australian Government has expanded its activities yery considerably in the field of Aboriginal education. While maintaining its previous direct responsibility for the education of Aboriginals living in the Northern Territory, the Government now provides financial and other assistance each year to support the efforts of State Governments and other authorities in an Australia-wide program financed from an Aboriginal Advancement Trust Account administered by the Department of Aboriginal Affairs.

The Pension Fund Portfolio

PENSION TRUSTS have several characteristics which make them considerably different from personal trust accounts, the investment of which has been the normal problem of the trust investment officer. The purpose of the pension trust is to provide the cost of the liabilities assumed when the company signs the agreement to provide specified pensions to its employees. Cost includes the expenses of administration, as well as the money paid to the retired employees. During the first years of the plan, the annual disbursements of the fund are usually much less than the cash contributions paid by the employer. Eventually the point is reached where, barring a larger working force and rising pay scales, the fund has enough earnings so that, together with the annual contribution, it will meet the liability as determined by estimates of the actuaries. Because of this feature, the investment results should be measured by combining income and principal performance of the fund. Another characteristic, and a happy one, is that in most instances monthly, quarterly, or annual additions are made to the account. This is in great contrast to the vast majority of trust accounts where a sum of money is made available all at once to the trustees for investment, and that's it. The periodic contributions place the trustee in a position to dollar-average his purchase of common stocks without necessarily selling bonds to provide the funds. One of the most perplexing problems for the trustee in dealing with the normal personal trust account is to determine whether or not to commit all the money at the prevailing level of stock prices and money rates or to spread purchases over a period of months or years. Cash being given to the pension-fund trustee at regular intervals simplifies the life of a trustee on this score. Pension trusts also have their problems. One of the great uncertainties is the fact that the annual contributions are based on the people now employed. Although employment has for the past fifteen years been at a very high level, a prudent trustee must be prepared for a return to business swinging through wider gyrations. Declines in employment, and therefore in contributions, normally should coincide with dips in business activity. From this follows the fact that, at this point, corporation earnings are probably at a somewhat lower level, and stock prices should be affected by these developments. The trustee of the pension trust is lulled into a state of complacence by the periodic additions of cash, which he can use for the purchase of bonds, preferred stocks, or common stocks as he sees fit. Under the new circumstances, the cash might be a half or a quarter of the previous figure, or in extreme cases it might be omitted entirely. Will he take advantage of the lower prices of common stocks by securing buying power from the sale of bonds, or will he simply confine his program to the smaller amount of cash available? Investment decisions in many trust accounts are modified by the tax consequences. Since the pension trusts qualified under Section 165 are not subject to income taxes, the trustee has a relatively easy time on this score. Nevertheless, his program does not have so smooth a road as it seems. In the great majority of plans, the actuary uses the book value rather than the market value of the investments in the pension trust, in order to determine the contribution needed that particular year for the fund to continue sound actuarily. In other words, the difference between market and book value is disregarded. We expect that, in years of good business, a book profit on the securities will be shown, the company's earnings will be good, making the tax deduction for pensions particularly worth while, and the company's cash position will be strong. If at this point the trustee should take a substantial amount of profits, the book value of the fund would be increased correspondingly. Such a rise would reduce the company's tax-free contribution at the time when making the payment is the most advantageous (or least painful), from the point of view of the employer.

TREASURY INVESTMENT FUNDS AND OPEN-MARKET OPERATIONS*

TREASURY INVESTMENT FUNDS now amount to about $39 billion, compared with less than $7 billion in I940. Securities held for these funds account for I 5 to 20 per cent of the total federal debt. Holdings for such funds are more than twice as great as the combined holdings of the Federal Reserve Banks. For purposes of this paper it is not necessary to estimate precisely the future rate of increase in these funds. It will suffice to point out tliat, barring statutory changes, further increases may be anticipated.' Although there is a large number of trust funds handled by the Treasury, a few of them account for the bulk of the total. Among the larger of the funds are the Federal Old Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund, the Unemployment Trust Fund, the National Service Life Insurance Fund, and the Railroad Retirement Account. The purpose of this paper is to indicate the powers and the limits on the powers of the Treasury to invest trust account funds in marketable government securities, to indicate the way in which these powers have been used, and to raise the question about future policy with respect to Treasury use of investment funds for open market operations. Efforts by the Secretary of the Treasury to influence the market for government securities are not new. As far back as I 790 a special board was established to buy in the open market any federal debt issues that fell below par.2 Although the purpose of such operations has varied from time to time, Treasury efforts to support the government credit and the government security market have been a more or less continuous part of our financial machinery.'

Premiums and Discounts in Trust Accounts

Premiums and Discounts in Trust Accounts