Based around a case study of the traditional toy industry, the research examines how companies create trust with parents, the main toy purchasers, and the importance of ethical behaviour in trust development when a vulnerable community is involved. Previous literature has revealed that trust leads to mutually beneficial company-consumer relationships but scholars have failed to agree on its definition, dimensions or measurement due to its complexity, diversity and intangibility. Few have distinguished between 'trustworthiness' as a moral quality of organisations and 'trust', which is a consumer judgement about companies and brands, made as part of their purchase deliberations. A review of the literature led to the development of a framework of trustworthy behaviour identifying five sets of antecedents (organisational, individual, control, relational and branding factors) and four key dimensions with related variables - 'Integrity' and 'Benevolence', relating to ethical constructs and 'Commitment' and 'Satisfaction', relating to organisational constructs. The model was then substantiated through qualitative research with a sample of senior managers in 12 leading toy companies and other stakeholders including industry body representatives, retailers and parents. The findings revealed that in a challenging economic climate, trust in toy companies is being driven principally by the marketing offer and by external influencers such as legislators, retailers, licensors, and the media. Examples of good ethical practices were identified, although often unnoticed by consumers, and the worthier companies, for whom trustworthiness was important, appeared to be faring less well economically than companies selling third party brands. Consumers' trust was significant in the preschool market but diminished in importance as children matured when their influence overrode parents' more rational purchase considerations. The research revealed a paradox that parents as well as children are vulnerable consumers who are often bypassed in the marketing process. Whatever children's consumer rights, there will always be a lack of trust in the industry whilst young children rather than parents are so blatantly targeted.

Building and maintaining trust is a necessary condition for group cohesion. In order to successful collaborative group process in online learning environment, development of trust must be understood in online teams. Difference communication behaviors in the online teams with different trust levels were investigated in this research. Participants were 61 students in an undergraduate level who enrolled in the online course. In this research, online teams&amp / #8217 / collaborative communication behaviors were analyzed using both qualitative and quantitative methods to understand the factors that facilitate and deepen trust. Data were obtained from questionnaires and online class discussion archives. One of the findings of the study was that trust is built and maintained in online teams. Another finding was that online trust can be fragile and certain communication behaviors should be presented by members to deepen and maintain the trust level. The results of the study showed that there must be social interaction, enthusiasm, task oriented interaction, equal and predictable communication, and feedback among the member of online teams to built and maintain trust.

Across domains, organizations and society are facing a trust deficit (Twenge, Campbell, & Carter, 2014). This is problematic, as trust is important to a variety of critical organizational outcomes, such as perceived task performance, team satisfaction, relationship commitment, and stress mitigation (Costa, Roe, & Taillieu, 2001), and has been cited as a motivator for cooperation and knowledge transfer due to its capacity to reduce fear and risk of exploitation (Chen et al., 1998; Fleig-Palmer & Schoorman, 2011; Irwin & Berigan, 2013; Yamagishi & Sato, 1986), and a key component of collaboration. As organizations increasingly rely upon collaboration for achieving important outcomes, it is of critical importance that organizations understand how to not only develop interpersonal trust in collaborative partnerships to facilitate these positive outcomes, but also the way in which interpersonal trust is broken and can be repaired when problems inevitably arise. Though research has begun to investigate trust violation and trust repair, relatively little is known about trust development, violation, and repair as a process that unfolds over time. This is problematic, as cross-sectional studies fail to capture change, both in terms of how trust itself changes as well as how the effect of a violation or the utility of a repair strategy may be weaker or stronger in the long-term than the short-term. Thus, findings from a single point in time may result in different conclusions and recommendations than those that would result from long-term investigation. Therefore, this study examines how interpersonal trust patterns unfold within individuals, and how these patterns differ between individuals depending on the type of violation and the repair strategy employed. An experimental study using discontinuous growth modeling to examine intraindividual and interindividual differences in trust processes found that generally, trust was negatively impacted more after an intentional ("will do") violation as compared to a competence ("can do") violation, such that it had a greater impact on character assessments than a competence violation and also damaged perceptions of ability as much as a competence violation. These negative impacts carried over into trust restoration, which was significantly slower after an intentional violation than a competence violation. Furthermore, study findings suggest that after an intentional violation, trust restored more quickly when surveillance was implemented than when compensation was offered. Though the opposite did not hold true for a competence violation, the findings did approach significance. Drawing from these findings, implications and future research recommendations are discussed.

Interpersonal trust reflects a vital component of all social relationships. Trust has been linked to a wide variety of individual and group outcomes in the literature, including personal satisfaction and motivation, willingness to take risks, and organizational success (Dirks & Ferrin, 2001; Pratt & Dirks, 2007; Simpson, 2007). In this dissertation I tested a new conceptual model evaluating the roles of attachment, propensity to trust, perceived similarity of trustee to self, and social exchange processes in trust development with randomly assigned, same-sex undergraduate roommates. Two hundred and fourteen first-year students (60% female, 85% Caucasian, mean age = 18) at a large south-eastern university completed self-report measures once per week during the first five weeks of the fall semester. Perceived similarity measured the second week of classes and social exchange measured three weeks later combined to provide the best prediction of participants' final trust scores. Attachment and propensity to trust, more distal predictors, did not have a significant relationship with trust. This study demonstrated that trust is strongly related to perceived similarity, as well as social exchange. A prime contribution of this study is the longitudinal, empirical test of a model of trust development in a new and meaningful relationship. Future work may build on this research design and these findings by focusing on early measurement of constructs, measuring dyads rather than individuals, and incorporating behavioral measures of trust. / Ph. D.

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