The United States and China have been conducting extensive operational-level engagement on nuclear arms control and nonproliferation issues for more than three decades. Many policy-makers and analysts are wondering whether such engagement has contributed to more trust in the two countries' nuclear relationship. The core question that this research seeks to address is: does operational-level engagement between the United States and China increase China's trust towards the United States in their nuclear relationship? And if so, why is this the case and how does this take place? This research distinguishes strategic trust from moralistic trust and examines the impact of operational-level engagement on helping states recognize common interests and/or common moral principles. It fills the gap in existing international relations research that does not answer the question of whether and how trust arises between states that do not imagine or understand there to be common interests or shared moral principles at the inception of engagement. The research uses three cases in the U.S.-Chinese nuclear engagement to show that interaction at the operational-level brings about convergence of perception about common interests at the top-level through building of epistemic community and enhancing bottom-up communication. However, such engagement encourages realpolitik thinking in Chinese nuclear community and therefore undermines moralistic trust between the two countries.

Background Trust is an important factor in many contexts, especially in inter firm relationships. Here, trust is essential in order to maintain the tenure of inter-organizational relationships. Auditors are in need of trust when it comes to accomplishing their audit tasks. Purpose The purpose of this research is to investigate how experienced and newly appointed auditors create and maintain trustful relationships with their clients. The research will focus on how auditors with different levels of experience approach their clients when building trust. By taking the limited mandate period of the auditor into consideration, the study will adopt a further aspect which has not been researched upon before. This will provide auditors as well as other professionals with insight of how to establish and maintain trustful relationships. Method The research will be conducted from an interpretivist standpoint, as the human interest will be in focus. The research method of this study has a qualitative approach, where eight interviews were conducted with auditors who were from the all of the Big 4. The auditor possesses different levels of experience. The empirical findings will be analyzed based on the stages of trust development by Lewicki and Bunker. Conclusion Availability, knowledge, experience and being able to identify the client’s needs were factors that were considered to be important when building trust. Prior relationship building was a deviant strategy used the experienced auditors. The limited term of office was not considered to affect the level of dedication to build trustful relationship with the client, the findings suggested that it rather was a motivation for the auditor to implement trust building strategies in an early stage of the relationship.

ABSTRACT Aim of the study: This study aims to contribute to the existing knowledge on similarities and differences of networking styles across Europe and support either network contextualists or universalists with new empirical knowledge. Method used: A multiple case study was used in this paper. Qualitative data was gathered gathering from 10 interviews collected amongst experienced Swedish, Polish and Dutch entrepreneurs. Findings: Empirical findings have revealed significant differences in the networking patterns in the Netherlands, Sweden and Poland. Main networking motivation for Dutch entrepreneurs is seeking new sales opportunities, for Swedish it is the exchange of knowledge and information. All the entrepreneurs admitted that trust is an important component of network relationship. However, in Sweden trust seem to play more significant role. The empirical findings questioned the theory that trust can be easily transferred based on recommendations. No entrepreneur directly suggested that asked about trust acquisition. In Sweden informal networks are strongly preferred, while in the Netherlands formal network are much more popular. In Poland informal networks are also more popular. In the Netherlands, commercial, paid organizations may be extremely popular given the fact that all of the Dutch respondents participate in them, on the other hand in Sweden governmental networking organizations are quite common, in Poland no respondent have mentioned neither of them. Findings indicate that networking is still not as developed in Poland as it is in two other researched countries. Practical Implications: Common networking patterns cannot be expected in different European countries and background studies should be conducted before entering foreign market. There is still market growth opportunity for commercial networking organizations in Poland. Polish government should engage in more effective promotion of networking amongst entrepreneurs. Contribution: Empirical data confirm the contextualists approach that emphasizes the importance of national differences on networking and warns managers that resemblance of certain patterns cannot be assumed for different countries. This approach was confirmed since the findings exposed significant differences in several areas of networking. Keywords: Business networking, internationalization of business network, networking motivations, trust building, network type preferences, network contextualism and universalism.

The development of virtual sponsored communities has created great possibilities for people and companies to interact on shared platforms. To create interaction in the community, it is essential to create the perception of trustworthiness of the community. The purpose of this study is to examine which concepts of trust-building constitute the perception of trustworthiness of virtual sponsored communities. A theoretical framework based on previous studies on trust-building in virtual communities is used to provide the basis for our empirical studies. The paper examines the virtual sponsored community of an online video game, World of Warcraft, with both quantitative surveys and qualitative netnographical observations to determine the important concepts which affect the perception of trustworthiness of the community from the perspectives of the sponsor and the gamers. Our findings show that the concepts of quality content, privacy policy, interaction, knowledge growth, satisfaction, embeddedness, shared value and perceived responsiveness constitute the perception of trustworthiness of the virtual sponsored community. The findings also show implications for causal relationships between the concepts affecting the perception of trustworthiness for future studies.

The Swedish crisis management system relies strongly on collaboration. Collaboration is even declared within official documents as an obligation when preparing for and acting upon a crisis event. Collaborating can bring powerful positive effects on crisis response efforts such as an increased workforce, sharing of resources and dissemination of risks. But collaboration is hard and depends on the existence of a series of components to be effective. One such component is the presence of trust between collaborative partners. Due to what appears to be a growing intensity in volunteer engagements within the Swedish crisis response system, issues of professional-volunteer collaboration become increasingly interesting. Volunteer adds a variety of benefits to a crisis operation, but also brings certain difficulties into the collaboration. This paper has used semi-structured interviews in order to explored determinants of trust building between professionals and volunteers organized in the FRG format. By using a qualitative content analysis approach and incorporating identified themes into a novel tentative theoretical model, it is shown that operative trust between professionals and volunteers are highly dependent on simulation exercises as well as personal and cultural familiarity.

Referred to as a graveyard for foreign aid and simultaneously a great example for progress in terms of implementing the New Deal for Engagements in Fragile States, Somalia is recovering from a protracted war, multi-dimensional fragility and deep mistrust. This research analyses how international actors contribute to peace, state and trust building in the Somali region by implementing the New Deal TRUST principles on a national level and by engaging in the peacebuilding process in Galkacyo, Central Somalia on a local level. Through a qualitative approach and case study design, the research relies on data collected through qualitative content analyses of reports, official documents and evaluations as well as data collected through key informant interviews. Informants involve persons working for the European Union, the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme in New York and Somalia, the Civil Society Platform for Peacebuilding and Statebuilding, Interpeace Eastern and Central Africa Regional Office and the New York University with connection to the New Deal and or peace and statebuilding engagements in the Somali region. The findings, generated from the collected data, are analysed through a theoretical framework based on Wallensten’s (2015) theory on ‘Quality Peace’, Eriksen’s (2017) theory on Statebuilding and Barbalet’s (2009) and Eccles (2015) theory on trust building. The research finds that the implementation of the TRUST principles is scattered in terms of progress. ‘Use and strengthen country systems’ and ‘Strengthening capacities’ are the two principles delivering most progress according to the majority of the informants, whereas ‘Risk sharing’ and ‘Timely and predictable aid’ perform worse. The implementation of the first principle, ‘Transparency’, mainly referring to the sharing of documents, inclusive decision-making and reporting of aid to the Somali Aid Coordination Unit at the Prime Minister’s Office, has made moderate progress. At a local level, Interpeace engages in the Galkacyo peacebuilding process by providing strategic, financial and technical support to local structures, e.g. a joint Peace Committee and joint security force. The research identifies a tendency that the implementation of the New Deal TRUST principles has had limited impact on a local level. The development of the emerging FMSs has added an extra dynamic to the conflict in Galkacyo, a city divided by the two administrative regions Galmudug and Puntland. Furthermore, whether donor behaviour has changed in fragile states as an effect of the New Deal is debated. The engagements on a local level in Galkacyo tend to contribute to peace and trust building among clashing communities, however, limited impact can be identified on the statebuilding process and on peace and trust building vis-à-vis the Federal and State Governments.

Globalization trends have affected many software organizations in the past years. They are turning towards global software development (GSD) market in search for quality with a lower price and shorter development times. It turns out that certain management methods used for in-house development are not applicable in GSD, often resulting in a failed project. It is believed that trust is one of the key factors for success or failure of such projects. In the first part, this thesis studies the causes of lacking or losing trust in globally distributed teams though a literature review and systematic review of current research. The second part of this thesis studies the practices which have been applied in industry to prevent or minimize the impact of trust related issues. Finally these practices are mapped to the identified issues, resulting in a set of recommendations for managers involved in GSD.

Digital communication advancements are constantly opening up opportunities for businesses to easily expand and collaborate across borders. The Covid-19 pandemic has caused a situation where people have had to work remotely in a virtual setting which forced managers to adapt to a fully remote management approach. This is a single case study investigating how the industrial company Atlas Copco navigated through two global change projects, one executed in a semi-remote setting, and the other executed in a fully remote setting. The remote setting has made it difficult to build trust, and this thesis aims to increase the understanding of trust building in remote global change projects. This is a qualitative, single case study conducted with an abductive research approach. The data has been collected through interviews with representatives from the case company. The empirical findings show that people define trust differently, whether trust is built over time or exists from the start. The various definitions imply that there are consequences if people define trust differently. The thesis also highlights the importance of communication and support activities when building trust and what role the change management team had in this process. Factors affecting trust building are highlighted and mitigating aspects are presented.

Since culturally diverse people need to collaborate in the 21st century, Higher Education adopted global citizenship education (GCE) to promote a cosmopolitan mindset. Learners in the digital era can use various modes of communication, exerting individual agency so that learners can construct global minds through their communication experiences. Blended learning based on learner-centered knowledge construction may provide extended spaces where learners can shape a personally trusted and collectively consensual vision of the global mind. A qualitative evaluation case study explored learners' perception shifts regarding autonomous identity formations and confidence-trust-building in a blended course under GCE. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, semi-structured in-depth online interviews and document analyses on the archive data were adopted to triangulate learners' perceptions and instructors' observations. Findings showed that individuals could shape their global citizen identities through a performative loop of reflection and interaction provided via a blended format. The participants' comfort zone levels influenced different identity formation paths. However, their goals, in the end, were aligned under the idea of engaging in local community activities through lifelong commitment. Intrapersonal and interactional forms of communication solidified self-confidence and collective trust through synergically linked blended learning activities. Overall, global citizen identities have gradually evolved while self-confidence and trust in others have gradually increased through different communication steps. The significance of the study lies in reinforcing the results of prior research about performativity-oriented GCE through a community of people practicing in blended learning environments. Members' hands-on activities while building self-confidence and collective trust through communication helped them shape their collective identity. In these processes, individuals' intrapersonal communication seemed to play an insightful role in effectively connecting reflective and interactive activities. Enhanced credibility by replicating this GCE model in future studies will ensure various organizations and institutions adopt it to shape their members' global visions and build group cohesion.

Background: Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a strategic tool for Swedish companies that promotes long-term success and competitiveness via transparency and ethical behaviour. While the EU emphasises on human rights across the world, ISO 26000:2010 provides non-certified guidance for organisations seeking sustainability. Despite substantial CSR research, there is a lack of knowledge of its role in building trust and generating effective social contributions. Purpose: This research intends to investigate the complex interaction between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities, trust-building, and effective social contribution in the context of contemporary corporate practices. This study seeks to evaluate how CSR efforts might create stakeholder trust while addressing the growing societal concerns caused by fast development. This study examines how Swedish companies integrate CSR into their operations to achieve both social and financial value. Method: A qualitative study was conducted utilising a constructivist approach and an interpretivist philosophy. Furthermore, the methodology used a purposive sampling technique followed by snowballing to provide a wide range of sustainability experts.  Secondary data was gathered through semi-structured interviews and analysed using the Gioia method, which classified the data as first-order and second-order themes, and third-order aggregate dimensions. Conclusion: The study created a seven-step framework for effective social contribution and highlighted the significance of an integrated framework for analysing CSR benefits. Finally, the study shows how CSR builds trust by making effective social contributions and defines it by saying that a social contribution is effective when it aligns with the company's objectives, management, and skill set.