This thesis investigated trust over the Internet to seek a better understanding of trust and ways to increase trust in online transactions. The focus of this investigation was consumer-to-consumer transactions at online auctions where key actors were virtually anonymous to each other. The perceptions of a broad range of online auction community members support this thesis. Normative and grounded theoretical perspectives of trust and factors that affected trust were considered, compared and contrasted as part of this research. Concept mapping and the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) were used to underpin the grounded theoretical perspective of trust developed as part of this thesis. Online auction cases were selected and analysed to check the grounded theoretical perspective of trust developed. This thesis provided a better understanding of trust, provided new insights into trust and distrust, added to the body of theory for trust and identified ways to increase trust in online transactions. This thesis provided better understandings of: trust; moral obligations; network decision structures; power; fairness; and perceived behavioural controls at online auctions. A grounded theoretical model of trust based in TPB was developed that was specific to online auctions. This model of trust developed appeared to provide clearer and richer insights into online auction trust. The model of trust developed identified factors and constructs that affected trust rather than the magnitude of any affects. The model developed and findings of this thesis can be applied to new or specific online auction sites to help practitioners build better online environments to encourage more people to transact rather than just browse online. The grounded theoretical perspective of trust and findings of this thesis may be relevant to other online consumer-to-consumer transactional environments.

Firms may gain benefit from each other‘s skills and resources when they engaged in a long term supply chain relationship, hence, improving their competitive advantage. Adoption of information technology initiatives such as e-procurement systems may further enhance the effectiveness of the relationship. Trust and dependency factors have been identified as important elements that influence business relationships. The objective of this study is to investigate the role of technology attributes, inter-organizational trust and inter-organizational dependency manufacturer‘s have towards their suppliers and customers when making an e-procurement adoption decision. This study also aims to determine if there is a critical gap between trust and dependency towards suppliers and customers and to identify which trust and dependency constructs have the most critical gap. Data was collected through case study interviews and mail survey questionnaires. It was analysed using the Partial Least Square Regression (PLS) analysis where the results indicate that dependency did have a significant positive influence on e-procurement adoption decisions, while trust did not. Size of the company, which is a control variable, has a significantly negative effect on adoption decision. Hence, this study confirmed that the level of dependency and size of company did influence an e-procurement adoption decision. Three gap analysis methods, namely the T-test analysis, weighted mean gap and the un-weighted Important Performance Analysis (IPA), were adopted and the results indicate that there is a significant gap between trust and dependency towards the supplier and customer, where the level of both variables are higher towards the customer than the supplier. Construct related to communication of problem is identified as trust factor with the most critical gap, while how partners help improve a firm‘s reputation and the level of knowledge transfer have the most critical gap for dependency. This study extends the body of literature related to information technology adoption factors by investigating the effect of trust and dependency in supply chain relationships within a single study. While findings on dependency and size of company are consistent with previous studies, findings on trust provide a new paradigm to trust-related studies as it is identified as not an important factor that influence e-procurement adoption decisions, particularly in a developing country such as Malaysia.

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / The rapid pace of growth in the field of human genetics has left researchers with many new challenges in the area of security and privacy. To encourage participation and foster trust towards research, it is important to ensure that genetic databases are adequately protected. This task is a particularly challenging one for statistical agencies due to the high prevalence of categorical data contained within statistical genetic databases. The absence of natural ordering makes the application of traditional Statistical Disclosure Control (SDC) methods less straightforward, which is why we have proposed a new noise addition technique for categorical values. The main contributions of the thesis are as follows. We provide a comprehensive analysis of the trust relationships that occur between the different stakeholders in a genetic data warehouse system. We also provide a quantifiable model of trust that allows the database manager to granulate the level of protection based on the amount of trust that exists between the stakeholders. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that trust has been applied in the SDC context. We propose a privacy protection framework for genetic databases which is designed to deal with the fact that genetic data warehouses typically contain a high proportion of categorical data. The framework includes the use of a clustering technique which allows for the easier application of traditional noise addition techniques for categorical values. Another important contribution of this thesis is a new similarity measure for categorical values, which aims to capture not only the direct similarity between values, but also some sense of transitive similarity. This novel measure also has possible applications in providing a way of ordering categorical values, so that more traditional SDC methods can be more easily applied to them. Our analysis of experimental results also points to a numerical attribute phenomenon, whereby we typically have high similarity between numerical values that are close together, and where the similarity decreases as the absolute value of the difference between numerical values increases. However, some numerical attributes appear to not behave in a strictly `numerical' way. That is, values which are close together numerically do not always appear very similar. We also provide a novel noise addition technique for categorical values, which employs our similarity measure to partition the values in the data set. Our method - VICUS - then perturbs the original microdata file so that each value is more likely to be changed to another value in the same partition than one from a different partition. The technique helps to ensure that the perturbed microdata file retains data quality while also preserving the privacy of individual records.

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis examines the impact of implementing participatory school administration, leadership and management (PSALM) via Advisory School Councils (ASC) in Philippine public secondary schools. Through an experiment with empirical surveys, documentary analyses and interviews, this study reveals that the experimental group (EG) had higher levels of commitment, empowerment, trust and inclination for meaningful participation in improving the school compared with the control group (CG) after one year of implementing PSALM. However, the one-year experiment did not yield a significant impact on the students’ academic achievement levels. Survey respondents (735 for the 1st survey and 603 for the 2nd survey) were the school heads, teachers, students, alumni, parents and community leaders from the 76 participating schools (38 schools for experimental group and the same number for the control group). The EG perceived the ASC operations in their schools as effective. Factors that either elicit or inhibit active participation from the stakeholders in collaborative decision making have been identified. An authentic model for the effective implementation of PSALM is proposed. The study suggests that the Philippines should expedite the process of establishing school councils in the public schools as an approach for creating better schools.

Grounded theory methodology has guided the grounded theory methods used to explore the acute care paediatric nurses' perspective of what they do when a child has had a severe accident. The research was initiated from the experience of nursing children in the context of a rehabilitation centre and wondering how acute care nurses promoted a child's recovery after a severe unintentional injury.Many avenues were used to search international and New Zealand literature but the scarcity of literature related to what acute care paediatric nurses do was evident. Therefore this research has the potential of informing the speciality practice of acute care pediatric nursing.Nursing children in the acute care ward after a severe accident is complex. It encompasses nursing the family when they are experiencing a crisis. It is critical that the acute care nurse monitors and ensures the child's physiological needs are met, and the nurse "works with" the child to maintain and advance medical stability. Nursing interactions are an important part of "working with", communication is the essence of nursing. This research has focussed on the nurses' social processes whilst caring for the physical needs of the child and interacting with the family and multidisciplinary team when appropriate.An effective working-relationship with a nurse and family is founded on trust. Trust is an accepted part of our day-to-day lives and how to develop a trusting working-relationship with the child and family has not been explored prior to this research. Grounded theory methods supported the process of exploring the social processes of "building trust" whilst "working with" families in a vulnerable position. Nurses rely on rapport to be invited into a family's space to "work with" and support the re-establishment of the parenting role. The "stepping in and out" of an effective working-relationship with a family is reliant on trust. Nurses build trust by spending time to "be with", using chat to get to know each other, involving and supporting the family to parent a "different" child and reassuring and giving realistic hope to help the child and parents cope with their changed future.A substantive theory of the concept of "building trust to work with" has been developed using grounded theory methods. The theory has been conceptualized using the perspective of seven registered nurses working in paediatric acute care wards that admit children who have had a severe traumatic accident.

This project explores the challenges of managing in times of organisational stress. The New Zealand department of corrections is facing multiple pressures which are only set to increase including: financial strictures as government funding is being highly scrutinised, greater demand as inmate numbers increase, and reduced capabilities as many staff lack experience. A grounded theory in a case study setting (three prisons in Christchurch, New Zealand) was undertaken utilising repertory grid and semi-structured interviews to explore the ways in which managers cope during times of such stress. A total of 11 interviews were conducted. In the case, I considered what differentiates effective managers from those who appear less able to cope. It was found that effective managers are those who are able to build trust and respect with their constituents. When staff trust and respect their managers it is because they feel valued and perceive their manager to be on their side; they are then willing to reciprocate. Positive regard, demonstrations of support, and leading by example were found to be key factors leading to being perceived as being on the staff’s side. The links between trust, respect and performance along with the valuation of staff wellbeing were examined.

Several studies have shown that there is a negative impact of perceived risk on trust and on the online purchasing behaviour of buyers. Other research suggests a positive impact. However, these relationships have been suggested by using evidence obtained from the purchase of inexpensive, uncomplicated, and hence low risk products such as books, compact disks (CD’s, DVD’s), or clothing. Exploring whether such associations could be generalised within the complex, costly high risk and credence products such as gemstones has not been examined. This gap in the literature was addressed in this study. The results of the study suggest that perceived risk and trust are significant determinants of the online purchasing behaviour of gemstone buyers. The study also shows that the type of Internet marketing strategy used by the seller (the place strategy) and the buyer’s privacy, and security concerns influence a buyer’s perceived risk to purchase gemstones online. Furthermore, Internet fraud protection has been found to be the only significant factor that has an influence on the buyer’s trust to purchase gemstones online. These results have implications for the literature, and all sellers and consumers.

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis examines the impact of implementing participatory school administration, leadership and management (PSALM) via Advisory School Councils (ASC) in Philippine public secondary schools. Through an experiment with empirical surveys, documentary analyses and interviews, this study reveals that the experimental group (EG) had higher levels of commitment, empowerment, trust and inclination for meaningful participation in improving the school compared with the control group (CG) after one year of implementing PSALM. However, the one-year experiment did not yield a significant impact on the students’ academic achievement levels. Survey respondents (735 for the 1st survey and 603 for the 2nd survey) were the school heads, teachers, students, alumni, parents and community leaders from the 76 participating schools (38 schools for experimental group and the same number for the control group). The EG perceived the ASC operations in their schools as effective. Factors that either elicit or inhibit active participation from the stakeholders in collaborative decision making have been identified. An authentic model for the effective implementation of PSALM is proposed. The study suggests that the Philippines should expedite the process of establishing school councils in the public schools as an approach for creating better schools.

Dissertation (PhD)--University of Stellenbosch, 2007. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.

Zugl.: Trier, Univ., Diss., 2001/02 u.d.T.: Becker, Rainer: Die fiducie des neuen Code civil von Québec