Organizational Trustworthiness Research Articles

Public relations and the practice of paid content: Practical, theoretical propositions and ethical implications

This article focuses on the relatively new marketing phenomenon of embedded paid content. However, the reality is that Israeli public relations (PR) practitioners are engaged in promotion of paid digital content marketing (DCM) without full disclosure or transparency on various internet sites. Three major questions are therefore raised and discussed: (a) Does payment for content – which entails PR practitioners control over content – demand a review of PR practice definitions? (b) Does PR paid DCM makes “give-and-take relationships” with journalists and the “two-way symmetric model” redundant in digital channels? (c) What are the ethical implications of using paid DCM without full disclosure for PR practitioners and brand stakeholders? We suggest that definitions of PR should be reviewed in light of using undisclosed paid DCM. Moreover, we claim that the penetration of PR into buying digital media, and thus purchasing control in the same way as advertising, contributes to an ambiguous line between PR and advertising. From an ethical perspective, when paid DCM is embedded into our main digital information channels, often hiding commercial messages, readers may be confused between editorial and paid content generated by marketers. This confusion may well lead to a decline in the trustworthiness of media organizations and business organizations using this practice.

Identifying the Factors of Stakeholder Trust: A Theoretical Study

The aim of this study is to identify and systematize the factors of stakeholder trust and to present the impact of the trust factors on a particular stakeholder's trust. There have been found two basic factors of stakeholder trust – these are corporate reputation and organizational trustworthiness. Such factors as emotions, propensity to trust, experience with the organization and sociocultural factors, same as inborn factors or acquired during growth; factors related with the environment where the person lives or other factors are the secondary. It is suggested to divide the trust factors into controllable and uncontrollable by the organization. Finally, supposed two propositions were expressed: 1) controllable factors have a direct impact on every stakeholder's trust; 2) uncontrollable factors have an indirect impact on a consumer's trust. These propositions were reflected in a developed theoretical model of the impact of the trust factors on stakeholder trust.

Validating a scale for citizen trust in government organizations

Citizen trust in government at the macro level has been studied by public administration scholars for many years. To further our understanding, assessing trust at the meso level of government organizations is important to more precisely determine effects and antecedents of trust at the organizational level. The organizational trust literature has shown that organizational trustworthiness is multidimensional, but the extant literature has not validated such measures in a public administration context. The proposed scale builds on and adapts an existing organizational trust scale to a public administration context. The ‘Citizen Trust in Government Organizations’ scale is validated using data from two different samples (total n = 991), resulting in a scale of nine items measuring three dimensions: perceived competence, benevolence, and integrity. This scale can be used by other researchers and is valuable to gain a more specific and multi-dimensional understanding of trust in government organizations.Points for practitionersA major problem for government organizations worldwide is the lack of perceived trustworthiness by the public. To tackle this problem, a way to measure it is needed, but at the moment there are only generic measures to assert perceived trustworthiness in a government organization. This article presents a first validation and incorporates three dimensions: perceived competence, benevolence, and honesty. Practitioners can use this scale and adapt to their relevant local context to identify specific trustworthiness problems.

Formal Trust Assessment with Confidence Probability

Trust and trustworthiness of web services and organizations is calculated as scalar values. But there is still a certain level of risk for the overall reliability of this value. In this article, we focus on calculating trust values as intervals between upper and lower bounds based on predefined confidence values through an additional confidence probability. This will give us a more realistic approach to the trust assessments between individuals and organizations. We also developed a web-based software tool, TAST (Trust Assessment Software Tool) that collects the web services’ evaluation of different customer groups for similar organizations through the user interface and calculates the trust intervals for predefined and previously selected confidence values. Our model uses a weighted calculation of mean and variances of customer groups in specific periods and analyses the total and incremental trust of different customer groups.

Sources of alliance partner trustworthiness: Integrating calculative and relational perspectives

Research on the sources of organizational trustworthiness remains bifurcated. Some scholars have adopted a calculative perspective, stressing the primacy of actors' rational calculations, while others have approached trustworthiness from a relational perspective, focusing on its social underpinnings. We help to reconcile these seemingly disparate views by adopting an integrative approach that allows us to clarify the boundaries of both perspectives. Based on dyadic survey data from 171 strategic alliances, we find that the calculative perspective (represented by contractual safeguards) has higher predictive power when the partner lacks a favorable reputation. In contrast, the relational perspective (represented by organizational culture) predicts trustworthiness more strongly when familiarity with the partner organization is high.

Psychological contract breach and voluntary turnover: Testing a multiple mediation model

Ample evidence exists of an association between psychological contract (PC) breach and intention to quit. Although some studies report an association between breach and turnover behaviour, a meta‐analysis by Zhao et al. (2007, Personnel Psychology, 60, 647) failed to find any significant link. This seems counter‐intuitive, and therefore, to explore this relationship between breach and voluntary turnover more fully, we developed and tested a model that proposed exchange fairness and trust as mediators. Using data collected from over 6,000 British Royal Air Force personnel, we find a positive relationship between breach and subsequent voluntary turnover, which exchange fairness and trust fully mediate. The contribution of the study to our understanding of the relationship between PC breach and voluntary turnover is discussed.Practitioner points The study considers whether the psychological contract represents a useful tool for understanding employee turnover behaviour. The findings indicate that if employers are able to fulfil their obligations to their employees, then employees are less likely to voluntarily quit the organization. The reason why this relationship occurs is linked to employees' perceptions regarding the fairness of the exchange relationship and organizational trustworthiness.

How patients choose hospitals: using the stereotypic content model to model trustworthiness, warmth and competence.

In many countries, policy initiatives force the implementation of demand-driven healthcare systems to encourage competition among providers. When actively choosing hospitals, consumers can compare data on the quality of hospital performance among providers. However, patients do not necessarily take full advantage of comparative quality information but instead use a number of readily available proxies to evaluate provider trustworthiness. According to the stereotypic content model, organizational trustworthiness is built on stereotypical perceptions of hospitals' competence and warmth, reflected by visible hospital characteristics such as ownership and teaching status, and size. We introduce a theoretical framework on stereotypic quality perceptions that brings together fragmented findings in health services research on patient quality expectations of hospital characteristics. The model provides a basis for further research and recommendations for improved hospital communication strategies. The study suggests that researchers as well as hospital management should pay more attention to stereotypical patient quality perceptions and their impact on hospital choice to understand patients' quality evaluations better.

On establishing trustworthy inter-organisational collaboration

Trust is not a single concept that can uniformly be applied to all cases for trust-based decision-making and its measurement depends on actors’ perception and thus can never be measured with the single criterion. Developing fact-based mechanisms for assessing the level of trust in organisations is amenable to large collaborative networks, in which some members do not know each other. This article presents a conceptual model in terms of mathematical equations for supporting trust analysis in organisations. The model, and thus its related mechanisms for assessing the level of trust in an organisation comprise trust criteria, known factors and intermediate factors. The paper also presents a model for assessing trustworthiness of organisations based on mathematical equations formulated applying systems engineering and system thinking concepts. It concludes by presenting the implementation and functionalities of a trust management system.

Development of interorganizational trust in virtual organizations

PurposeA virtual organization (VO) is a set of geographically dispersed and functionally diverse organizational entities interconnected by electronic forms of communication that cooperate with one another for a common valued outcome. The objective of this article is to propose a research framework that illustrates the development of trust between VOs.Design/methodology/approachThis paper provides an overview of literature on VOs, identifies antecedents of trustworthiness in virtual environment, explores the role of boundary spanners' interpersonal trust, and relates them to inter‐VO trust formation. A research analysis is developed that depicts the proposed relationships.FindingsThe propositions shed light on the overall interorganizational trust building process in VOs. In doing so, the framework also acknowledges the role of individual boundary spanners of a trustor organization in the trust development process.Originality/valueSystematic scholarly research relating to VOs has been somewhat limited. With the emergence of VOs as important organizational forms, there is an increasing need to comprehend how interorganizational trust is developed and maintained in VOs. This study attempts to fill this gap in the extant literature by exploring how social exchange factors in a virtual context relate to factors of organizational trustworthiness of the trustee organization. In addition, this paper also investigates the key role played by the boundary spanners of both organizations in the trust formation process.

On modelling evolution of trust in organisations towards mediating collaboration

The market is continuously evolving to match the pace of business transactions conducted in today's technically connected and digitalised world. Organisations need to be properly prepared to either individually or in collaboration with others match the market evolution, which is characterised by: the increasing intensity of competition on acquisition of opportunities, the demand for the large amount of resources and large number of different competencies, and the continuous increase scarcity of resources, among others. Collaborative networks of organisations have therefore manifested in the market addressing these challenges. Establishing fruitful collaboration is challenging and therefore a proper approach to mediate collaboration among organisations is needed to support resolving the emerging disputes during their interactions. Creating trust among organisations is a base requirement for them to quickly join their efforts in the dynamic formation of a goal-oriented collaborative network, in order to respond to market opportunities, and thus committing themselves to the established collaboration. But trust between two organisations dynamically evolves over time. This article addresses the aspects of modelling of evolution of trustworthiness of organisations as a way to raise the understanding of trust concept and applying these concepts to enhance and mediate collaboration among organisations. It also addresses the aspects related to different forms of trust models in organisations as well as characterisation of the life cycle of trust in organisations.

Trust in the employer: the role of high-involvement work practices and procedural justice in European organizations

Despite the central role of trust in the organizational sciences, we know little about what makes people trust the organizations they work for. This paper examines the antecedents of employees' trust in their organizations drawing on survey data from over 600 European professional workers and managers. The results revealed direct as well as indirect relationships of both human resource (HR) practices and procedural justice with trust. The relationships of both HR practices and procedural justice with trust were partially mediated by perceptions of organizational trustworthiness (in terms of perceived ability and trustworthy intentions of the organization). Justice and HR practices were also found to interact such that justice forms a stronger predictor of trust in organizations when HR practices are less developed. In addition, employees' dispositional propensity to trust explained significant variance in employee trust in their organization, even when it was controlled in our analysis. The implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed.

Trust and Stakeholder Theory: Trustworthiness in the Organisation–Stakeholder Relationship

Trust is a fundamental aspect of the moral treatment of stakeholders within the organization–stakeholder relationship. Stakeholders trust the organization to return benefit or protections from harm commensurate with their contributions or stakes. However, in many situations, the firm holds greater power than the stakeholder and therefore cannot necessarily be trusted to return the aforementioned duty to the stakeholder. Stakeholders must therefore rely on the trustworthiness of the organization to fulfill obligations in accordance to Phillips’ principle of fairness (Business Ethics Quarterly 7(1), 1997, 51–66), particularly where low-power stakeholders may not be fully consenting (Van Buren III, Business Ethics Quarterly 11(3), 2001, 481–499). The construct of organizational trustworthiness developed herewith is presented as a possible solution to the problem of unfairness in organization–stakeholder relations. While organizational trustworthiness does not create an ethical obligation where none existed before, stakeholders who lack power will likely be treated fairly when organizational trustworthiness is present.

The Buyer–Supplier Relationship: An Integrative Model of Ethics and Trust

The buyer–supplier relationship is the nexus of the economic partnership of many commercial transactions and is founded upon the reciprocal trust of the two parties that participate in this economic exchange. In this article, we identify how six ethical elements play a key role in framing the buyer–supplier relationship, incorporating a model articulated by Hosmer (The ethics of management, McGraw-Hill, New York, 2008). We explain how trust is a behavior, the relinquishing of personal control in the expectant hope that the other party will honor the duties of a psychological contract. Presenting information about six factors of organizational trustworthiness, we offer insights about the relationship between ethics and trust in the buyer–supplier relationship.

Risk Perception and Communication

Many health risks are the result of deliberate decisions by individuals consciously trying to get the best deal possible for themselves and for those important to them. Some of these choices are private ones, such as whether to wear bicycle helmets and seatbelts, whether to read and follow safety warnings, whether to buy and use condoms, and how to select and cook food. Other choices involve societal issues, such as whether to protest the siting of hazardous waste incinerators and half-way houses, whether to vote for fluoridation and "green" candidates, and whether to support sex education in the schools. In some cases, single choices can have a large effect on health risks (e.g. buying a car with airbags, taking a dangerous job, getting pregnant). In other

Benchmarking as a process for demonstrating organizational trustworthiness?

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to discuss why neither people nor organizations can demand trust, but rather how people and organizations can demand trustworthiness of themselves and others. While trustworthiness can be developed, and trust earned, this process takes time.Design/methodology/approachAn examination of the literature was undertaken to review trust from a variety of dimensions and perspectives to determine the role of trust as a fundamental notion, which may be an underlying factor in foreign aid objectives.FindingsThis paper advocates that an understanding of trust and trustworthiness, when fused with a stakeholder perspective, may lead to enhanced levels of global poverty reduction objectives.Originality/valueThis paper enhances personal knowledge and understanding at the theoretical and practical levels enabling business leaders to gain insight regarding the inherent stakeholder factors that need to be considered when designing performance‐measurement strategies and reporting frameworks.

Initial public perceptions of carbon geosequestration: implications for engagement and environmental risk communication strategies

Despite active scientific research into the geological sequestration of carbon dioxide, little is known about how the public perceives geosequestration technologies designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by capturing and storing carbon dioxide in underground sites. Thus, through an online survey (n = 1273), this study investigated Australians' knowledge and perceptions of carbon geosequestration. Most respondents believed that it was important for Australia to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, yet only 18% had previously heard of geosequestration and only 5% closely followed the greenhouse debate. People were keen to participate in public discussions and learn more before forming a definite opinion, although many had 'Not-In-My-Backyard' reactions and raised concerns about the risks and effectiveness of technology and the trustworthiness of organisations. By highlighting current perceptions and knowledge about geosequestration, this research informs environmental risk communication strategies and emphasises the importance of early engagement, education and partnerships between stakeholders for fostering informed decision-making about its use in the Australian context.

Is society smart enough to deal with smart cards?

This article discusses the legal issues surrounding the development of RFID enabled smart cards. Smart cards can transform the delivery of services and goods, through the automated identification and verification of customers, resulting in significant efficiency gains and ultimately lower costs for consumers. Smart cards have the potential to seriously undermine the human right to privacy. They may greatly facilitate the surreptitious collection of personal data. The privacy of consumers may be violated which will seriously undermine user confidence in the trustworthiness of commercial organisations and state institutions alike. Solutions to the privacy problem must be holistic, and encompass responses from a range of stakeholders. Where possible, the design of the smart card technology must be privacy promoting. In cases where this is not possible, deployment of smart card technology must be accompanied by the effective enforcement of privacy legislation, voluntary self and co-regulation, codes of conduct and technological tools.

Building Trust in Business Schools Through Ethical Governance

This paper presents conceptual arguments to suggest that trust within organizations and trustworthiness of organizations are built through ethical governance mechanisms. We ground our analysis of trust, trustworthiness, and stewardship in the business literature and provide the context of business school governance as the focus of our paper. We present a framework that highlights the importance of knowledge, resources, performance focus, transparency, authentic caring, social capital and citizenship expectations in creating a basis for the ethical governance of organizations.

RFID Tags and the European Union: Really free internal distribution?

This article discusses the development of Radio Frequency Identification technology and its legal implications. The technology promises to transform the supply chain, through increased efficiency, stocktaking accuracy and ultimately lower costs for consumers. RFID technology creates a variety of potential legal concerns. In particular, RFID tags have the potential to seriously undermine the human right to privacy. RFID tags are privacy neutral, in that they neither destroy privacy nor promote privacy. However, RFID tags may greatly facilitate the surreptitious collection of personal data. The privacy of consumers of RFID enabled products may be violated which will seriously undermine consumer confidence in the trustworthiness of commercial organisations. Within the European Union, RFID technology may facilitate actions designed to undermine the Internal Market. RFID technology is in its infancy, however, the speed of technological development in this area will require a range of legislative and non‐legislative responses in the near future. Solutions to the privacy problem must be holistic, and encompass responses from a range of stakeholders. Firstly, at the design stage, RFlD technology must be privacy promoting. Thereafter, utilisation of RFID technology must be accompanied by the adoption of privacy protecting legislation, voluntary self and coregulation, codes of conduct and technological tools.

Organizational trustworthiness and workplace labor productivity: Testing a new theory

Based on a secondary analysis of the Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey, this study explores several relationships that may link trust to changes in labor productivity. Drawing on Hodson’s work, we examine how - and under what conditions - supportive employment practices and management’s operational competence may contribute to workers’ trust in management, which in turn is hypothesized to lead to an improvement in labor productivity over time. The findings support the hypothesis that more supportive employment practices lead to higher trust in management. However, a similar relationship between management’s operational competence and trust did not obtain, and there was very little connection between trust and improvements in workplace productivity. Further analysis showed that there was considerably more support for our hypotheses when applied to service sector firms: both supportive employment practices and management competence contributed to trust and higher trust led to more rapid incre...