Corporate Trust Research Articles

Developing trust through stewardship

PurposeThis paper examines the gap between reporting and managers’ behaviour to challenge the current theoretical underpinnings of intellectual capital (IC) disclosure practice and research. The authors explore how the key features from IC and integrated reporting can be combined to develop an extended model for companies to comply with EU Directive 2014/95/EU and increase trust in corporate disclosures and reports.Design/methodology/approachThis essay relies on academic literature and examples from practice to critique the theories that explain corporate disclosure and reporting but do not change management behaviour. Based on this critique, the authors argue for a change in the fundamental theories of stewardship to frame a new concept for corporate disclosure incorporating using a multi-capitals framework.FindingsWe argue that, while the inconsistency between organisations’ reporting and behaviour persists, increasing, renewing or extending the information disclosed is not enough to instil trust in corporations. Stewardship over a company’s resources is necessary for increasing trust. The unanticipated consequences of dishonest behaviour by managers and shareholders compels a new application of stewardship theory that works as an overarching guide for managerial behaviour and disclosure. Emanating from this new model is a realisation that managers must abandon agency theory in practice, and specifically the bonus contract.Research limitations/implicationsWe call for future empirical research to explore the role of stewardship theory within the dynamics of corporate disclosure using the approach. The research implications of those studies should incorporate the potential impacts on management behaviours within a stewardship framework and how those actions, and their outcomes, are disclosed for rebuilding public trust in business.Practical implicationsThe implications for integrated reporting and reports complying with the new EU Directive are profound. Both instruments rely on agency theory to coax managers into reducing information asymmetry by disclosing more. However, agency theory only re-affirms the power managers have over corporate information. It does not change their behaviour, nor to act in the interest of all stakeholders as the stewards of an organisation’s resources.Social implicationsWe advocate that, in business education, greater emphasis is needed on how stewardship has a more positive impact on management behaviour than agency, legitimacy and stakeholder theories.Originality/valueWe reflect on the current and compelling issues permeating the international landscape of corporate reporting and disclosure and explain why current theories which explain corporate disclosures do not change behaviour or engender trust in business and offer an alternative disclosure model based on stewardship theory.

외식기업의 사회적 책임(CSR)활동과 신뢰, 구매의도와의 관계 연구 : 대전지역을 중심으로

외식기업의 사회적 책임(CSR)활동과 신뢰, 구매의도와의 관계 연구 : 대전지역을 중심으로

한국 엔터테인먼트 기업의 CSR 활동이 기업신뢰 및 브랜드 이미지에 미치는 영향

한국 엔터테인먼트 기업의 CSR 활동이 기업신뢰 및 브랜드 이미지에 미치는 영향

기업의 윤리성에 대한 인식이 구전의도에 미치는 영향 : 기업동일시, 신뢰, 그리고 충성심의 매개효과

기업은 왜 윤리적이어야 하는가? 윤리적인 기업은 항상 성공하는가? 지금까지 그리고 현재에도 이 질문들과 관련하여 학계와 업계에서 뜨겁게 찬반논쟁이 진행되고 있다. 본 연구는 사회정체성이론으로부터 기업동일시를, 관계마케팅이론으로부터 신뢰와 충성심을 가져와서 이 세 가지 변수들을 매개변수로 사용하여 기업의 윤리성에 대한 인식과 구전의도 사이에 존재하는 간격을 좁히고자 수행되었다. 즉, 본 연구는 기업의 윤리성에 대한 인식이 구전의도를 증가시키는데 있어서 기업동일시, 신뢰, 그리고 충성심이 매개변수로서 역할을 한다고 제안하고 있다. 총 220명의 소비자들을 대상으로 설문조사를 하여 구조방정식모델로 가설들을 분석한 결과, 기업의 윤리성에 대한 인식은 신뢰와 충성심에는 통계적으로 유의하게 정(+)의 영향을 미치고, 기업동일시에는 정(+)의 영향을 미치기는 하지만, 통계적으로는 유의하지 않은 것으로 나타났다. 또한 기업동일시, 신뢰, 그리고 충성심은 모두 구전의도에 통계적으로 유의하게 정(+)의 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 본 논문의 결과들은 기업의 윤리성에 대한 인식, 구전의도, 그리고 두 변수 사이에 존재하는 메커니즘에 대해 깊은 관심을 가지고 있는 학자들과 실무자들에게 중요한 시사점들을 줄 것이다.

Sustainable Corporate Social Media Marketing Based on Message Structural Features: Firm Size Plays a Significant Role as a Moderator

Social media has been receiving attention as a cost-effective tool to build corporate brand image and to enrich customer relationships. This phenomenon calls for more attention to developing a model that measures the impact of structural features, used in corporate social media messages. Based on communication science, this study proposes a model to measure the impact of three essential message structural features (interactivity, formality, and immediacy) in corporate social media on customers’ purchase intentions, mediated by brand attitude and corporate trust. Especially, social media platforms are believed to provide a good marketing platform for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) by providing access to huge audiences at a very low cost. The findings from this study based on a structural equation model suggest that brand attitude and corporate trust have larger impacts on purchase intention for SMEs than large firms. This implies that SMEs with little to no presence in the market should pay more attention to building corporate trust and brand attitude for their sustainable growth.

Believing is buying: religiosity, advertising skepticism, and corporate trust

Prior research has shown that religiosity influences consumer skepticism, but such research has lacked examination of the breadth of this effect and isolation of this effect by manipulating religion. Three studies explore this relationship. Study 1 shows that advertising skepticism mediates the relationship between religiosity and corporate trust. Study 2 finds that highly religious consumers are less skeptical of advertising leading to higher product perceptions and higher company trust. Study 3 primes religion with a writing task to show that the effects from Studies 1 and 2 are magnified after exposure to a religious prime, such that consumers who are primed with religion, in comparison to a control condition, exhibit significantly lower (higher) advertising skepticism, resulting in higher (lower) product evaluations, and higher (lower) brand trust. Corresponding implications for the trust, deception, and persuasion literature are discussed.

프랜차이즈 기업가 열정이 기업신뢰, 일체감, 그리고 충성도에 미치는 영향

프랜차이즈 기업가 열정이 기업신뢰, 일체감, 그리고 충성도에 미치는 영향

스포츠를 통한 공유가치창출(CSV) 활동 인식이 기업 신뢰, 기업-소비자 동일시 및 충성도에 미치는 영향

스포츠를 통한 공유가치창출(CSV) 활동 인식이 기업 신뢰, 기업-소비자 동일시 및 충성도에 미치는 영향

Public Sector Corruption and Trust in the Private Sector

AbstractUsing Afrobarometer data, we show that experiencing bribery in the course of one's interactions with the public sector lowers one's trust in big private corporations, small businesses and local traders. As trust in market institutions is vital to the efficient functioning of an economy, our findings point to a previously unknown and potentially substantial cost of corruption. This relationship is evident even when we control for perceptions of corruption. Our findings are not driven by corruption lowering interpersonal trust. Having to pay a bribe for household services is the corrupt interaction most strongly associated with the decline in private sector trust. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Social Capital, Trust, and Firm Performance: The Value of Corporate Social Responsibility during the Financial Crisis

ABSTRACTDuring the 2008–2009 financial crisis, firms with high social capital, as measured by corporate social responsibility (CSR) intensity, had stock returns that were four to seven percentage points higher than firms with low social capital. High‐CSR firms also experienced higher profitability, growth, and sales per employee relative to low‐CSR firms, and they raised more debt. This evidence suggests that the trust between a firm and both its stakeholders and investors, built through investments in social capital, pays off when the overall level of trust in corporations and markets suffers a negative shock.

The Investigation of Psychological Mechanism to Corporate Crisis: The Mediating Role of Corporate Trust

The Investigation of Psychological Mechanism to Corporate Crisis: The Mediating Role of Corporate Trust

The Foundations of U.S. Public Opinion About Campaign Finance in the Post-Citizens UnitedEra

Abstract Those seeking to influence campaign finance policy often invoke public opinion to support their legal and policy arguments. Thus, an understanding of the factors that explain citizens' views about the topic can help illuminate the political landscape surrounding it. This study examines the foundations of public opinion about campaign finance issues that emerged in the wake of the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United. An analysis of original data from a national survey found that political predispositions—including party identification, political ideology, external political efficacy, trust in corporations, and political interest/attention—predicted individuals' opinions, as did use of the Fox News cable channel and satirical television news programs. The results speak to how a range of actors may shape and capitalize on the nature of public opinion here.

The Effects of Consumer’s Cultural Capacity on Mecenat Attitude and Corporate Trust: Does Mecenat Authenticity Moderate the Relationship?

The Effects of Consumer’s Cultural Capacity on Mecenat Attitude and Corporate Trust: Does Mecenat Authenticity Moderate the Relationship?

Factored similarity models with social trust for top-N item recommendation

Trust-aware recommender systems have attracted much attention recently due to the prevalence of social networks. However, most existing trust-based approaches are designed for the recommendation task of rating prediction. Only few trust-aware methods have attempted to recommend users an ordered list of interesting items, i.e., item recommendation. In this article, we propose three factored similarity models with the incorporation of social trust for item recommendation based on implicit user feedback. Specifically, we introduce a matrix factorization technique to recover user preferences between rated items and unrated ones in the light of both user-user and item-item similarities. In addition, we claim that social trust relationships also have an important impact on a user’s preference for a specific item. Experimental results on three real-world data sets demonstrate that our approach achieves superior ranking performance to other counterparts.

Corporate Social Responsibility Exposure and Performance of Mutual Funds

We study the performance consequences of exposure to corporate social responsibility (CSR) through stock holdings for mutual funds. Using a large sample of U.S. domestic mutual funds, we find that funds overweighting low-CSR stocks outperform funds underweighting them by between 1.7% and 2.6% annually. This outperformance, however, reverses during the 2008-2009 financial crisis. We also find similar performance patterns among stocks. An equal-weighted high-minus-low CSR stock return spread can explain the CSR-based fund performance spread, whereas a value-weighted spread cannot. These results are consistent with the interpretation that low-CSR funds overweight low-CSR small-cap stocks that offer high returns to investors who are averse to low-CSR investments. Investors tend to avoid low-CSR stocks due to either social norms against these stocks or risk of underperformance of these investments when overall trust in corporations suffers a negative shock (such as during a financial crisis).

The Influence of Mass Media on Corporate Trust - Focusing on the Perceived Trustworthiness -

불확실성이 높아진 현 소비 시장에서 기업신뢰의 중요성은 나날이 증가하고 있지만 국내 기업에 대한 신뢰도 수준은 매우 낮다. 이에 본 연구는 현재 우리나라 기업에 대한 신뢰 수준과 신뢰 결정요인인 신뢰특성 지각(진정성, 역량, 온정성)의 평가 수준을 밝힘으로써 우리 사회의 기업신뢰를 정확히 진단하고자 하였다. 또한 신뢰특성 지각 세 요인 중 어떤 요인이 전반적 신뢰 수준에 있어 가장 많은 영향을 미치는지 밝히고자 하였다. 더불어, 매스미디어가 기업신뢰형성에 미치는 역할을 밝히기 위해, 기사를 읽기 전, 후로 응답자들의 신뢰 수준이 어떻게 달라지는지 살펴보았다. 특히, 기사의 내용이 1)세 기업(삼성, 현대, SK) 중 어떤 기업을 다루었는지, 2)신뢰특성 지각(진정성, 역량, 온정성) 중 무엇을 다루었는지, 3)기사의 내용이 긍정적인지, 부정적인지를 모두 고려한 총 18개의 기사를 제작하여(예. 삼성의 긍정적 역량에 대한 기사), 세분화된 기사 종류에 따라 기업신뢰에 미치는 영향이 서로 다른지 알아보고자 하였다. 먼저 각 기업의 신뢰 현황을 살펴본 결과, 삼성에 대한 신뢰도가 제일 높았으며, SK와 현대에 대한 신뢰도는 차이가 없었다. 신뢰특성 지각의 경우, 역량과 온정성에 대한 평가는 기업마다 달랐지만, 기업의 진정성에 대한 평가는 공통적으로 매우 낮았을 뿐 아니라 기업 간 차이도 나타나지 않았다. 이에 반해 세 신뢰특성 지각 중 진정성이 기업신뢰도에 미치는 영향력은 매우 큰 것으로 나타났다. 한편 미디어 효과를 구체적으로 살펴본 결과, 첫째, 기사의 긍․부정성 별로 보았을 때 긍정적 기사보다 부정적 기사가 신뢰도 및 신뢰특성 지각에 미치는 영향력이 더 컸다. 둘째, 기사의 신뢰특성 요인 별로 본 결과, 긍정적 기사 중에서는 진정성에 대한 기사만이 유일하게 기업신뢰도를 향상시켰다. 부정적 기사의 경우 어떤 신뢰특성 지각을 다루었는지에 관계없이 모두 기업신뢰도를 하락시켰으나, 그 중 응답자들이 역량에 대한 부정적 기사를 읽었을 때 신뢰도가 하락하는 폭이 가장 작았다. 셋째, 기업별 기사의 경우 현대와 SK에 대한 긍정적 기사를 읽었을 때만 기업신뢰도가 향상되었으며, 삼성에 대한 긍정적 기사를 읽은 경우에는 신뢰도에 변화가 없었다.

The Long-Term Effects of a Coal Waste Disaster on Social Trust in Eastern Kentucky Updated

Abstract This research note follows up a study of the immediate impact of an October 2000 coal waste disaster on social trust, community attachment, and risk perception in Martin County, Kentucky. This research study explores whether the negative social impacts of the October 2000 disaster in Martin County have persisted in the longer term. Specifically, it analyzes two waves of survey data Martin County (2001 and 2011) and Perry County, Kentucky (2001 and 2013), which served as the comparison or ‘control’ in the original study. This study finds that even though the disaster-stricken county’s trust levels have not rebounded to the level of the ‘control’ case, levels of trust in the directly impacted community have increased significantly over the ten-year time period. Trust levels in the non-impacted area have not increased, with the exception of trust in corporations, which increased in both communities.

A semantic-enhanced trust based recommender system using ant colony optimization

Collaborative Filtering (CF) is the most popular recommendation technique that uses preferences of users in a community to make personal recommendations for other users. Despite its popularity and success, CF suffers from the data sparsity and cold-start problems. To alleviate these issues, in recent years, there has been an upsurge of interest in exploiting trust information to improve the performance of CF. In general, trust has a number of distinct properties such as asymmetry, transitivity, dynamicity and context-dependency. However, conventional trust-based CF systems do not address trust computation by considering all the properties of trust. Particularly, the context-dependency property has received less attention in the existing approaches. The consideration of all these properties leads to more accurate recommendations since the quality of the inferred is improved. In this paper, we propose a novel trust-based approach, called Semantic-enhanced Trust based Ant Recommender System (STARS), which satisfies all the properties mentioned above. Using ant colony optimization, the proposed system performs a depth- first search for the optimal trust paths in the trust network and selects the best neighbors of an active user to provide better recommendations. To consider the context-dependency property, trust inference in STARS depends on the semantic descriptions of items. Incorporation of both global and local trust in CF-based recommender systems in addition to the trust computation based on the semantic features of items allows STARS to alleviate the data sparsity, cold-start and "multiple-interests and multiple-content" problems of CF. Experimental results on real-world data sets show that STARS outperforms its counterparts in terms of prediction accuracy and recommendation quality and can overcome the above problems.

호텔웨딩연회장 선택속성, 기업신뢰, 충성도의 관계에 관한 연구

This research addresses the influence of corporate trust and loyalty on hotel wedding banquet halls. To achieve the results, the study surveyed customers with experience using four premium hotel wedding banquet halls in Daejeon over the course of a month from March 1st,2015 to March 31st,2015. Then, 267 valid samples taken from 300 total samples were analyzed using SPSS 21.0. The result is as follows: First, from factor analysis of selection properties, six factors were concluded and named as staff service, display expertise, available facilities, hotel image and hotel reputation, location convenience, food palatability, brand recognition, and propriety of menus based on each factor’s characteristics. Second, it was found that the most meaningful impact on corporate trust, staff service and display expertise affected menu propriety, hotel image and name, convenience came as a result of verification of hypothesis 1. There is a proportionate positive impact (+) on corporate trust by selection attributes for wedding banquet halls. Third, it is found that corporate trust has a proportionate positive influence (+) on all variables of loyalty including contentment, revisit and recommendation as a result of the verification of hypothesis 2 related with influencing the relationship between corporate trust and loyalty. In conclusion, hypothesis 1 was partially selected, and hypothesis 2 was found to result in meaningful influence on every variable. Therefore, people in charge of hotel management should establish active marketing strategies to attract potential wedding customers by managing selection attributes that influence corporate trust and loyalty by developing a new display.

Tactics to Restore Damaged Customer Relationship after Negative Events

Negative event about companies is widespread in media recently. Corporate image, trust and customer relationship of an organization can be damaged once negative media publicity is spread in the marketplace. How to restore damaged customer relationship becomes a critical task for management. This study examined effect of different repair tactics to repair corporate image and damaged relationship with customers after negative publicity. Effects of social account (apology, excuse, promise) and substantive actions (financial compensation, etc.) differ in different types of violation events. A combination of social account and substantive actions based on event characteristics may work better than using any single strategy. This study can help management effectively cope with the adverse impact of negative publicity. An efficacious combination of social account and substantive actions may maximize the effect of repair. Management of the companies should understand what the affected customers really need to figure out a most effective repair tactic.