EGOS Standing Working Group on Organisational Trust

Sub-theme 2 - Trust in Crisis: Diagnoses and Remedies

28^th EGOS Colloquium, 5–7 July 2012, Helsinki (Finland)

Recent global events have seriously undermined society’s trust in institutions and organizations. Taking the financial crisis as one prominent example, many analysts contend that it is trust, more than anything, which has been destroyed (e.g. Pew Research Center, 2009; Edelman Trust Barometer, 2009). In particular, the public’s confidence in banks, credit-rating agencies, investment agencies, insurance companies, business schools, and government regulators, has been undermined. A trust failure of such historical dimension raises a number of serious questions at the individual, organizational, and societal level, and provides potential for learning valuable lessons. The breakdown of trust is not limited to the financial crisis though. Rather, it has occurred in the context of a plethora of prominent organizational failures and trust betrayals spanning a decade or more (e.g. the UK parliamentary expenses scandal, Enron, Parmalat, AIG, Societe Generale, United Nations oil-for-food programme). Scholars, government leaders, policy makers, and social commentators have identified the need to restore public trust in institutions and organizations for the effective functioning of society.

Despite the considerable volume of work on trust and trust building over the past fifteen years, organizational research has given scant attention to the restoration of trust (Dirks, Lewicki and Zaheer 2009; Kramer & Lewicki, 2010). The limited research to date has relied heavily on a psychological approach and experimental methods, and has focused primarily on how individuals regain the trust of others. Yet, recent research suggests that the processes and mechanisms of trust repair are fundamentally different at the organizational vs. interpersonal level (see Gillespie and Dietz, 2009). However, there is currently limited research conceptualising trust at the institutional and organizational levels [for foundational work see Shapiro (1987) and Zucker (1986)], and little understanding of how macro and micro level forces influence trust dynamics at the institutional level.

The aim of this sub-theme is to focus attention squarely on organizational- and institutional-level trust failures and repair. We invite contributions that help to clarify theoretically and/or empirically the antecedents, processes and consequences of organizational and institutional trust, and its destruction and repair, as well as the dynamic interplay between interpersonal, group, organizational, institutional, and societal trust. We actively encourage a cross-disciplinary dialogue and submissions that adopt novel as well as traditional methodologies, including case-studies, surveys, ethnographies, experiments, mixed, grounded, and critical approaches. Papers are expected to have a clear ambition towards first-rate publication, and authors of accepted papers will be encouraged to submit to the forthcoming Special Issue of Organization Studies on 'Trust in Crisis: Organizational and Institutional Trust, Failures and Repair' (Deadline for paper submissions: 3 December 2012).

Challenging questions to address include:

• What strategies are most effective for restoring organisational trust? Under what circumstances and contexts do they result in enduring outcomes?
• To what extent do the expectations and processes of trust repair vary in response to different stakeholder groups (e.g. employees, customers, investors, suppliers, legislators etc.)?
• What insights into the antecedents and facilitators of trust failures can be gained from analysis of prominent institutional failures?
• To what extent are trust failures and repair efforts influenced by the broader legal, political, regulatory and cultural environment? Under what conditions can new regulations create, restore, or substitute for trust in institutions?
• Is it possible or appropriate to repair trust in organizations that have repeatedly violated their stakeholders’ trust? When is ‘distrust’ an asset? What is the functionality of low trust levels toward organizations? Under what circumstances, is distrust a problem?
• What are the barriers to effective trust restoration? To what extent do existing organizational theories help us understand why trust repair might be difficult in complex organizational settings?

Convenors

Dr Nicole Gillespie, University of Queensland, Australia, Email n.gillespie@business.uq.edu.au
Roderick Kramer, Stanford University, USA, Email kramer_rod@gsb.stanford.edu
Prof Reinhard Bachmann, University of Surrey, UK, Email r.bachmann@surrey.ac.uk