Trust Management Research Articles

Opportunities of trust in welfare management: From hierarchy and market to morality and social relations

Models for the development of Danish welfare continue to draw on trust as an important resource. This is expressed in efforts to promote debureaucratization, self-management and emancipatory governance. But what kind of trust are we talking about when we talk about trust in the public sector? The starting point of this article is that trust is not a singular entity but is expressed in different ways that are rooted in different models of public management and governance and their underlying assumptions. Thus, it is argued that the functioning of trust can be summarized in four paradigms: institutional trust, economic trust, moral trust and relational trust. The article presents the analytical, managerial and governance-related insights associated with the four paradigms and their interplay and makes suggestions for a relationally oriented research agenda on public trust.

Dynamic trust management framework using blockchain for zero-trust-based authentication in BYOD environments

ABSTRACT With evolving work patterns, employees access company resources from various devices, making traditional management approaches obsolete. Ensuring secure access is crucial. We propose a blockchain-based trust management framework utilizing smart contracts for continuous verification and behavior analysis. Suspicious activity triggers dynamic access adjustments. Blockchain ensures immutability and traceability in authentication. Our design mitigates centralization risks and enhances granularity. Experimental results show minimal time costs during verification, maintaining efficiency despite additional security checks.

Building Trust and Transparency in Educational Management

Trust and transparency are foundational to the effective management of educational institutions, fostering collaboration, accountability, and innovation. This paper examines the role of trust in enhancing communication, morale, and efficacy among educational stakeholders while emphasizing the multidimensional nature of trust, encompassing interpersonal, institutional, and systemic levels. Transparency is equally critical, promoting openness in decision-making, information accessibility, and ethical governance. Challenges and strategies for cultivating these values in diverse educational contexts are discussed, supported by case studies and best practices. The analysis highlights how a culture of trust and transparency drives sustainable educational reforms and strengthens community engagement. Keywords: Educational management, trust, transparency, stakeholder collaboration, ethical governance.

The Mediating Role of Trust in Manager in the Effect of Workload on Job Stress in Emergency Health Services

Workload is the number of activities an employee or organizational structure must complete using its skills and potential. Job stress is a harmful physical and emotional reaction that can occur when an employee faces job demands and pressures unrelated to knowledge, skills, and abilities, making it difficult to cope. Trust in managers is based on the idea that employees believe that their managers will keep their word and have a consistent, fair, and egalitarian managerial approach without any discrimination among employees. This study aims to determine the mediating role of trust in managers in the effect of workload on job stress in emergency health services (EHS). There is no study in the literature examining the relationship between workload, job stress, and trust in managers in EHS. The use of trust in managers as a mediating variable in the study contributes to the originality of the study. A cross-sectional research design was used in the study. A questionnaire was applied to 372 people working in EHS in a province in Turkey. Descriptive statistical methods, Pearson correlation analysis, and PROCESS macro Model 4 were used in regression analysis. Workload has a negative effect on job stress. However, this negative effect does not increase when trust in managers is used as a mediating variable. In other words, there is no mediating effect of trust in managers on the effect of workload on job stress. The workload of EHS employees’ leads to job stress. However, trust in the manager does not affect job stress. EHS managers should consider that workload can lead to job stress. The negative relationship between employees' trust in management and workload and job stress should be considered. Determining the optimal workload for healthcare workers and ensuring fairness in the distribution of tasks can reduce job stress and insecurity.

Blockchain Technology for Enhancing Supply Chain Transparency: Opportunities and Challenges

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of blockchain technology in enhancing transparency, traceability, and trust in supply chain management. It examines how blockchain can address challenges like counterfeit products, lack of visibility, and unethical practices, providing a secure and transparent record of supplychain transactions. The study is a conceptual analysis of blockchain’s capabilities and limitations in the supply chain. It investigates blockchain’s features—decentralization, immutability, and consensus mechanisms—and their potential to improve supply chain transparency and traceability. The paper also addresses barriers to adoption, such as cost, scalability, and regulatory compliance. Blockchain technology can significantly improve supply chain management by enhancing transparency, traceability, fraud reduction, and consumer trust. However, widespread adoption faces challenges due to high implementation costs, scalability concerns, and regulatory compliance issues This paper adds to the existing literature by analyzing blockchain’s potential to transform supply chains into a more transparent, ethical, and consumer-friendly model. It highlights both the benefits and limitations of blockchain in supply chain management, offering insights into how it could reshape the industry by promoting transparency and accountability

Deep learning Models for Trust management in Social Internet of Things

Introduction: The growing prevalence of IoT has resulted in both human-to-thing(H2T) communication and thing-to-thing(T2T) communication. In recent years, a new paradigm merging IoT with social networks has arisen, termed the Social Internet of Things (SIoT), where devices are not only intelligent but also socially conscious. Trust is an important element in SIoT and it allows reliable automatic communication between items and trust management is also an essential aspect for secure communications between IoT devices, In the dynamic SIoT environment, a traditional trust framework's static or heuristic approach is ineffective. Objectives: To study the Deep Learning (DL) Models for trust management in SIoT and to suggest a hybrid model to predict the trustworthiness of the IoT devices in SIoT Networks. Methods: A combined strategy is suggested in this study using Graph Neural Networks (GNN) and Recurrent Neural networks (RNN) to predict the trustworthiness of SIoT using vast high-dimensional data and detect specific trends in social communications. Results: The finding shows that the hybrid GNN and RNN model outperforms with an accuracy of 91.8% over the standalone GNN and RNN methods. Conclusions: The integrated model that includes both GNN and RNN techniques gives better results in terms of accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score over the other methods assessed separately. The ability of deep learning to interpret complex multidimensional data and adapt to the highly dynamic nature of social and physical interaction is significant in maintaining trust within SIoT networks.

Perceptions of AI-Driven Dynamic Pricing Strategies and Their Financial Impact on Vietnamese Tourism Companies

This study was conducted to answer the question of how artificial intelligence-based pricing systems affect customer satisfaction and the financial performance of Vietnamese travel agencies. The study was conducted to explore factors that enhance customer satisfaction and financial performance in travel agencies using artificial intelligence-based pricing strategies, with a specific focus on understanding the interaction between the effectiveness of perceived artificial intelligence systems, the extent to which artificial intelligence is applied, the trust of regulators, and perceptions of price fairness based on artificial intelligence. Using a linear structure model, we collected and analyzed survey data from 372 people to test five research hypotheses. The findings show that the perceived effectiveness of artificial intelligence systems, the level of application of artificial intelligence and the trust of managers significantly increase customer satisfaction, thereby positively impacting the financial performance of travel companies in Vietnam. However, the study did not find a statistically significant effect of perceptions of price fairness based on artificial intelligence on customer satisfaction. These results are important because they show that travel companies need to focus on the application of effective, adaptive and reliable artificial intelligence systems while addressing fairness concerns through transparency and effective communication with customers. The implications underscore how travel companies can improve the customer experience and achieve financial efficiencies by leveraging artificial intelligence technologies in their dynamic pricing strategies.

The missing links of value congruence: evidence from the Thai healthcare workforce.

This study aims to investigate possible factors, such as trust in management and shared vision, that influence value congruence and its mediating effect on work engagement. It also explores how resilience, functioning as a moderator, could change the nature of the links between value congruence and its determinants. Data were collected through an online survey from 301 healthcare employees in Thailand. Hypotheses were tested and analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling and bootstrapping procedures. The results reveal that value congruence mediates the positive impacts of trust in management and shared vision on work engagement. Trust in management and shared vision translate into higher levels of value congruence, more so when employees are highly resilient. The findings suggest that healthcare administrators should design interventions to cultivate trustworthy leadership behaviors in daily operations while improving communication of the organization's overarching vision and objectives to help employees internalize and seamlessly integrate its core values into their own professional identities. Despite the extensive research on value congruence and its outcomes, little is known about its development. This study makes a valuable contribution by addressing these missing links, particularly in hospital settings. It also highlights how resource management explains the ways in which resilience in practice influences employees' value congruence at work.

Cultivating cultural empathy among diabetes educators: A pre-post evaluation of a digital story intervention

Background: Indigenous Australians are disproportionately affected by diabetes, with a diagnosis rate nearly four times higher than people from a non-Indigenous background. This health disparity highlights the urgent need for healthcare providers to develop cultural empathy – a critical competency for delivering culturally safe and person-centered care. Cultural empathy is essential for building trust and effective communication in diabetes education and management within Indigenous people. However, there is a significant gap in targeted interventions to enhance this skill among healthcare providers. Aims: The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a digital storytelling intervention for enhancing cultural empathy levels of postgraduate diabetes education students. Design: This study has a pre-post survey design to measure changes in participants’ cultural empathy levels after exposure to a digital story. Methods: Students enrolled in a postgraduate diabetes education course at an Australian university were eligible to participate. The intervention included a first-person digital story about an Indigenous man with type 2 diabetes, accompanied by group-based discussions and self-reflection. The Comprehensive State Empathy Scale was utilised to assess empathy levels. Results: A total of 98 students completed both pre- and post-intervention surveys. There was a statistically significant increase in mean Comprehensive State Empathy Scale scores post-intervention (p < 0.001), indicating higher empathy levels. Improvements were observed across all six Comprehensive State Empathy Scale subscales, suggesting a multidimensional impact of the intervention. Conclusions: The digital story intervention significantly enhanced the cultural empathy levels of postgraduate diabetes education students. This study contributes to the evidence base for narrative-based pedagogies in cultivating empathy among healthcare providers. The findings highlight the potential of digital storytelling as a tool for improving cultural competency in healthcare education and practice, ultimately contributing to more empathic care for Indigenous people with diabetes.

SAFE-CAST: secure AI-federated enumeration for clustering-based automated surveillance and trust in machine-to-machine communication.

Machine-to-machine (M2M) communication within the Internet of Things (IoT) faces increasing security and efficiency challenges as networks proliferate. Existing approaches often struggle with balancing robust security measures and energy efficiency, leading to vulnerabilities and reduced performance in resource-constrained environments. To address these limitations, we propose SAFE-CAST, a novel secure AI-federated enumeration for clustering-based automated surveillance and trust framework. This study addresses critical security and efficiency challenges in M2M communication within the context of IoT. SAFE-CAST integrates several innovative components: (1) a federated learning approach using Lloyd's K-means algorithm for secure clustering, (2) a quality diversity optimization algorithm (QDOA) for secure channel selection, (3) a dynamic trust management system utilizing blockchain technology, and (4) an adaptive multi-agent reinforcement learning for context-aware transmission scheme (AMARLCAT) to minimize latency and improve scalability. Theoretical analysis and extensive simulations using network simulator (NS)-3.26 demonstrate the superiority of SAFE-CAST over existing methods. The results show significant improvements in energy efficiency (21.6% reduction), throughput (14.5% increase), security strength (15.3% enhancement), latency (33.9% decrease), and packet loss rate (12.9% reduction) compared to state-of-the-art approaches. This comprehensive solution addresses the pressing need for robust, efficient, and secure M2M communication in the evolving landscape of IoT and edge computing.

Building Trust and Inclusivity: Navigating Layered Stigma and Risk Communication for LGBTQ+ Individuals During COVID‐19 Outbreaks

ABSTRACTStigmatised groups, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer‐identifying (LGBTQ+) individuals, face increased vulnerability to infectious diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, coronavirus disease (COVID‐19), and mpox (monkeypox). Layered and intersectional stigma limits healthcare access and public health participation, making trust and inclusivity essential in crisis management and risk communication. This study examines the impact of risk communication on LGBTQ+ communities during the COVID‐19 outbreak in South Korea, where detailed personal information shared for contact tracing led to further stigmatisation. Through in‐depth interviews (N = 21), the research investigates (1) the intersectional and layered stigma and discrimination LGBTQ+ individuals faced; (2) factors that increased stigmatisation, eroded trust, and discouraged public health engagement, such as COVID‐19 testing; and (3) strategies that reduced stigma, fostered inclusivity, and encouraged protective health behaviours. Findings reveal that health authorities' insensitivity, the disclosure of identifiable contact tracing data, and the negative portrayals of LGBTQ+ community spaces collectively exacerbated stigma and public health barriers, particularly in culturally homogeneous and structurally inequitable contexts. Conversely, confidentiality, inclusive messaging, and community‐driven support were key to fostering trust and participation. The study underscores the urgent need for crisis management strategies that safeguard marginalised groups' rights, dismantle stigma, and prioritise equitable public health outcomes. These insights offer actionable lessons for policymakers and crisis managers navigating public health emergencies in high‐stigma contexts.

Unravelling the Role of Digital Partnering in Successful Construction Digitalisation – An Empirical Investigation

Abstract This study explores the concept of digital partnering among construction organisations, focusing on the essential factors that contribute to successful partnerships and their impact on achieving digital transformation. To gather quantitative data, a survey was conducted with construction professionals engaged in projects throughout South Africa. The data analysis employed a comprehensive six-step methodology, including mean item scoring, Kruskal- Wallis H-Test, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), and multiple linear regression (MLR). The findings from the EFA indicated that the effectiveness of digital partnering hinges on three critical elements: a supportive partnering environment, trust and mutual understanding, and management support. The MLR analysis further validated these factors as crucial for attaining digitally transformed construction organisations. Given the competitive and often adversarial nature of the construction industry in developing countries like South Africa, the study recommends that organisations pursue collaborative partnerships both within and outside the industry to facilitate digital transformation. This can be achieved by fostering an environment that nurtures trust, understanding, and strong management support for developing digital capabilities through collaboration. The study offers empirical insights into the key factors necessary for successful digital partnering, an area that has been largely overlooked in discussions surrounding construction digitalisation.

Trust Score Prediction and Management in IoT Ecosystems Using Markov Chains and MADM Techniques

Trust Score Prediction and Management in IoT Ecosystems Using Markov Chains and MADM Techniques

Civil society actors and conflict management in Moldova

The article focuses on the role of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and its efforts, in collaboration with local NGOs, in bringing about conflict resolution in the Republic of Moldova. The OSCE has been active in the Republic of Moldova for the last twenty years and has been working with NGOS from both sides of the Dniester/ Nistru river. While the process has met with several challenges over the years, the recent full-fledged war against Ukraine has complicated the strategy for conflict settlement of the Transdniestrian conflict even more. The main goal of this article is to present and analyse various forms of cooperation between the OSCE and local civil society actors and to identify activities which encourage confidence-building. To this end, we will discuss relevant conceptual approaches in the field of Conflict Resolution and focus on mediation, conflict transformation, conflict settlement, and reconciliation. Moreover, we will explore activities of civil society organizations which are engaged in dialogue and collaboration with the OSCE. Methodologically, the article is built around a constructivist theorizing and the main argument is that the Transdniestrian conflict is an identity conflict and reconciling the parties, from grass-root level upwards to community leaders, ensures identity transformation and confidence building. The latter are key aspects in fostering trust, dialogue, and conflict management.

A False Positive Resilient Distributed Trust Management Framework for Collaborative Intrusion Detection Systems

A False Positive Resilient Distributed Trust Management Framework for Collaborative Intrusion Detection Systems

Interaction-aware Trust Management Scheme for IoT Systems With Machine Learning-Based Attack Detection

Interaction-aware Trust Management Scheme for IoT Systems With Machine Learning-Based Attack Detection

Enhancing Public Financial Transparency Through the Integration of Taxation, Accounting, and Social Welfare Systems

This study explores the impact of taxation, accounting, and social welfare system integration on public financial transparency in Indonesia. The study collected data from government reports and interviews with financial policy experts, auditors, and government officials using mixed methods, including quantitative and qualitative analysis. The analysis results show that system integration significantly improves transparency through more accurate fiscal reporting and better access to public financial information. Challenges such as technology implementation costs, bureaucratic resistance, and capacity gaps still hamper the integration process. These findings align with existing literature, which underlines the importance of political support and capacity building to overcome these obstacles. This study recommends better training and international support to support system integration efforts and improve accountability and public trust in state financial management.

Trust-Centric and Economically Optimized Resource Management for 6G-Enabled Internet of Things Environment

The continuous evolvement of IoT networks has introduced significant optimization challenges, particularly in resource management, energy efficiency, and performance enhancement. Most state-of-the-art solutions lack adequate adaptability and runtime cost-efficiency in dynamic 6G-enabled IoT environments. Accordingly, this paper proposes the Trust-centric Economically Optimized 6G-IoT (TEO-IoT) framework, which incorporates an adaptive trust management system based on historical behavior, data integrity, and compliance with security protocols. Additionally, dynamic pricing models, incentive mechanisms, and adaptive routing protocols are integrated into the framework to optimize resource usage in diverse IoT scenarios. TEO-IoT presents an end-to-end solution for security management and network traffic optimization, utilizing advanced algorithms for trust score estimation and anomaly detection. The proposed solution is emulated using the NS-3 network simulator across three datasets: Edge-IIoTset, N-BaIoT, and IoT-23. Results demonstrate that TEO-IoT achieves an optimal resource usage of 92.5% in Edge-IIoTset and reduces power consumption by 15.2% in IoT-23, outperforming state-of-the-art models like IDSOFT and RAT6G.

Collaborative Motivation Framework Leveraging Similar Interest Behavior in Semantic Web Applications

With the growth of web technology, the semantic web offers a promising framework for online knowledge collaboration. However, trust issues can undermine users' willingness to collaborate, reduce the frequency of interaction and collaboration efficiency. This paper introduces a super node-based trust management model designed to enhance semantic networks by linking nodes through trust relationships. The model exploits the synergistic incentives of similar interest behaviours to achieve a steady construction of trust relationships. We propose a similarity filtering algorithm that calculates the similarity to filter out false, misleading, or unfair information effectively. Through simulations, we compare our model with RRGRET, Surework, and community-based approaches, and the results show that our model has good network properties, while also resisting multiple malicious attacks and guaranteeing collaboration success. This research contributes to optimizing node relationships within semantic networks and strengthening network robustness against interference.

High performance work systems and organizational performance: modeling the mediating role of managers’ trust in employee representation systems in European organizations

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the impact of managers’ trust in employee representation systems on the relation between HPWS and organizational performance. The present research, by including the trust of managers in ER, studies managers as direct factors that affect the HPWS-performance relation.Design/methodology/approachThe study employed partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) through SmartPLS software using a formative model (Mode B) that includes mediation on data collected by Eurofound from 6,980 establishments in 29 European countries.FindingsOur findings show that HPWS has positive direct effects on organizational performance. Our results indicate that trust of managers in ER has a mediator role and has a positive effect on the HPWS-performance relation.Originality/valueThe present study may be the first study that directly incorporates the role of managers and managers’ trust in the employee representation system in the relation between HPWS and organizational performance, highlighting the importance of the managers in the organization and emphasizing their role in the HPWS-performance relation.