During the past five years the Red Cross has been involved in two different internal crises. All of them can be related to trustworthiness and brand image. Why would someone keep donating money to an organization that has been involved in fraud and suspicion of corruption? The purpose of this dissertation is to explore how non-governmental (NGO) and non-profit (NPO) organizations rebuild their brand image and trustworthiness after a crisis. We will look at the problem from both the organization’s and the public’s point of view. The dissertation is based on theories about brand image, trustworthiness and crisis management. For the theoretical framework a model was created from these different theories. This study is conducted as a qualitative case study with a realistic philosophy. The findings and analysis shows that the Red Cross has an elaborated crisis management with a good base that can be adapted to suit each situation. However, there are some miscommunications between the organization and the public. Therefore, we suggest three improvements that can be made: communicate directly to the public, investigate immediately when suspicions occur, communicate the internal functions to the public. The first conclusion is that their form of reactive crisis management is that they have a weak pre-emptive crisis management, which consists of diffuse guidelines. After the crisis, these guidelines are adapted to the crisis. The second conclusion is that the organizations brand image and trustworthiness was affected negatively directly after the crisis occurred. However, today both the brand image and the trustworthiness have become stronger than before the crisis. Recommendation for future research is that it can be conducted in another area and include the behavior aspects of the respondents. In addition, the crisis communication team could be investigated.

There is a single thing that is universal to every human being, connection, unit, organisation, population, financial system and civilisation throughout the globe. If disconnected it might devastate the most authoritative government, the most flourishing business, most prosperous economy and the most powerful leadership. On the other hand if developed and influenced, that one thing has the potential to generate incomparable accomplishment and prosperity in every measurement of life. Yet, it is the least understood, largely ignored and most underestimated opportunity of our time. That one factor is trust. The intent of this study is to explore the nature of interpersonal trust relationships by investigating the factors of disposition trust, the domains of trust behaviour, cognition based trust and affect based trust as well as the accuracy of the performance appraisal. Factors that influence trust levels are pre-requisite to further investigate trustworthiness by means of other three factors: the employees’ ability, integrity and benevolence. If trust exists within an organisation, it influences the following factors positively: communication, organisational citizen behaviour, learning inside the organisation, turnover team performance as well as the organisation’s performance. An empirical study was done through a survey consisting of recognized questionnaires to establish the trust levels, as well as the accuracy of the performance appraisal system. This summarised the importance of the trust levels, as well as the accuracy of the performance appraisal system. The survey results were analysed in detail in order to conclude which construct and areas necessitate consideration from management. The trust foundations were understood differently by the employees as indicated by the results of the survey. Another indication from the survey was that there are important dissimilarities on how certain groups understand the leadership’s actions with respect to trust within the organisation. The possibilities for these differences were mentioned. Recommendations were also made to improve the three trustworthy factors along with the other constructs measured in this survey to identify the dissimilarities between the different language groups, different genders, the permanent and the part-time group. / Thesis (MBA)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013

There is a single thing that is universal to every human being, connection, unit, organisation, population, financial system and civilisation throughout the globe. If disconnected it might devastate the most authoritative government, the most flourishing business, most prosperous economy and the most powerful leadership. On the other hand if developed and influenced, that one thing has the potential to generate incomparable accomplishment and prosperity in every measurement of life. Yet, it is the least understood, largely ignored and most underestimated opportunity of our time. That one factor is trust. The intent of this study is to explore the nature of interpersonal trust relationships by investigating the factors of disposition trust, the domains of trust behaviour, cognition based trust and affect based trust as well as the accuracy of the performance appraisal. Factors that influence trust levels are pre-requisite to further investigate trustworthiness by means of other three factors: the employees’ ability, integrity and benevolence. If trust exists within an organisation, it influences the following factors positively: communication, organisational citizen behaviour, learning inside the organisation, turnover team performance as well as the organisation’s performance. An empirical study was done through a survey consisting of recognized questionnaires to establish the trust levels, as well as the accuracy of the performance appraisal system. This summarised the importance of the trust levels, as well as the accuracy of the performance appraisal system. The survey results were analysed in detail in order to conclude which construct and areas necessitate consideration from management. The trust foundations were understood differently by the employees as indicated by the results of the survey. Another indication from the survey was that there are important dissimilarities on how certain groups understand the leadership’s actions with respect to trust within the organisation. The possibilities for these differences were mentioned. Recommendations were also made to improve the three trustworthy factors along with the other constructs measured in this survey to identify the dissimilarities between the different language groups, different genders, the permanent and the part-time group. / Thesis (MBA)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013

In Tanzania, an ongoing private media boom operates within the frameworks of media laws dating back to the 1970s, restricting media freedom and enabling the government to keep some control of what is written on certain topics. This is widely acknowledged and makes Tanzania an interesting subject for studies of news media confidence from an audience perspective. Confidence is viewed as an attitude consisting of three components: the cognitive, the emotive and the behavioral component. The cognitive component consists of expectations and sought gratifications, the emotive component is the feeling of confidence or the disappointment of a failed expectation and the behavioral component includes what media an individual intends to use, which should not be mistaken for what media an individual is actually using. A quantitative questionnaire in Swahili was distributed to 84 randomly selected inhabitants of Dar es Salaam, almost equally distributed between three areas: the lower class area Mwanayamala, the middle class area Kimara and the upper class area Mikocheni. After finishing the quantitative study, 9 qualitative interviews were conducted with a representative selection of those answering the questionnaire. The interviews and questionnaires were conducted during November and December 2013 and all participants were guaranteed anonymity. Finding truthful information, getting education and entertainment was the most frequent sought gratifications from media usage. Media type, language and ownership were the medium characteristics most evidently affecting confidence. Religion, social status and interests were the individual characteristics most evidently affecting confidence. News media confidence turns out to be more about mutual understanding between the individual receiver and the sending medium, than perceived accuracy and independent monitoring of power.

abstract: Source selection is one of the foremost challenges for searching deep-web. For a user query, source selection involves selecting a subset of deep-web sources expected to provide relevant answers to the user query. Existing source selection models employ query-similarity based local measures for assessing source quality. These local measures are necessary but not sufficient as they are agnostic to source trustworthiness and result importance, which, given the autonomous and uncurated nature of deep-web, have become indispensible for searching deep-web. SourceRank provides a global measure for assessing source quality based on source trustworthiness and result importance. SourceRank's effectiveness has been evaluated in single-topic deep-web environments. The goal of the thesis is to extend sourcerank to a multi-topic deep-web environment. Topic-sensitive sourcerank is introduced as an effective way of extending sourcerank to a deep-web environment containing a set of representative topics. In topic-sensitive sourcerank, multiple sourcerank vectors are created, each biased towards a representative topic. At query time, using the topic of query keywords, a query-topic sensitive, composite sourcerank vector is computed as a linear combination of these pre-computed biased sourcerank vectors. Extensive experiments on more than a thousand sources in multiple domains show 18-85% improvements in result quality over Google Product Search and other existing methods. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Computer Science 2011

Nas últimas décadas, com o surgimento de grandes organizações de tecnologia da informação (TI) e a comoditização de produtos e serviços de TI, o mercado em geral percebeu a oportunidade de desenvolver novas soluções para seus clientes. Neste contexto, visando a criação de um ambiente de trabalho exploratório e orientado à inovação, a adoção de práticas mais modernas de gestão de TI tem chamado a atenção de executivos e ganhado espaço nas organizações. A TI bimodal caracteriza-se pelo uso de dois modelos de operação com propósitos distintos: 1) confiabilidade e; 2) agilidade. O presente estudo apresenta práticas de gestão de TI existentes no mercado orientados a estes diferentes modelos de operação. O objetivo do estudo é propor um framework de práticas de gestão de TI para TI Bimodal. São abordados os conceitos de Governança de TI, TI Bimodal, COBIT (Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies), ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library), CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration), PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge), Lean IT, DevOps, SCRUM e Project Model Canvas, servindo de base estrutural para o melhor entendimento do estudo O método qualitativo utilizado nesta pesquisa foi o estudo de caso, onde foram aplicadas 10 entrevistas com executivos de TI, pesquisa documental e observação participante em uma instituição financeira Cooperativa situada no Rio Grande do Sul. Como resultado foi proposto um framework de práticas de gestão para TI bimodal contendo 11 elementos e 30 práticas relacionadas. O framework cobre um conjunto de práticas abrangentes o suficiente para auxiliar diferentes organizações que tenham interesse em atuar com mais de um modo de operação. / In the last decades, with the emergence of large organizations of information technology (IT) and the commoditization of IT products and services, the Market in general has perceived the opportunity to develop new solutions for their clients. In this context, aiming at the creation of an exploratory work environment and directed toward innovation, the adoption of more modern practices of IT management have caught the attention of executives and gained space in the organizations. The bimodal IT is characterized by two models of operation in place with distinct purposes: 1) Reliability and; 2) Agility. This study presents existing IT management practices in the market directed at different operation models of IT. The goal of the study is to propose a framework of IT management practices for Bimodal IT. The concepts of IT Governance, Bimodal IT, COBIT (Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies), ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library), CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration), PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge), Lean IT, DevOps, SCRUM and Project Model Canvas, serve as the structural base for better comprehension of the study The qualitative method used for this research was the case study where 10 interviews were applied with IT executives, documental research and participant observation was carried out in a Cooperative financial institution situated in Rio Grande do Sul. As a result, a bimodal IT management practice framework containing 12 elements and 30 related practices was proposed. The framework covers a set of practices broad enough to help different organizations that have an interest in working with more than one mode of operation.

Nas últimas décadas, com o surgimento de grandes organizações de tecnologia da informação (TI) e a comoditização de produtos e serviços de TI, o mercado em geral percebeu a oportunidade de desenvolver novas soluções para seus clientes. Neste contexto, visando a criação de um ambiente de trabalho exploratório e orientado à inovação, a adoção de práticas mais modernas de gestão de TI tem chamado a atenção de executivos e ganhado espaço nas organizações. A TI bimodal caracteriza-se pelo uso de dois modelos de operação com propósitos distintos: 1) confiabilidade e; 2) agilidade. O presente estudo apresenta práticas de gestão de TI existentes no mercado orientados a estes diferentes modelos de operação. O objetivo do estudo é propor um framework de práticas de gestão de TI para TI Bimodal. São abordados os conceitos de Governança de TI, TI Bimodal, COBIT (Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies), ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library), CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration), PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge), Lean IT, DevOps, SCRUM e Project Model Canvas, servindo de base estrutural para o melhor entendimento do estudo O método qualitativo utilizado nesta pesquisa foi o estudo de caso, onde foram aplicadas 10 entrevistas com executivos de TI, pesquisa documental e observação participante em uma instituição financeira Cooperativa situada no Rio Grande do Sul. Como resultado foi proposto um framework de práticas de gestão para TI bimodal contendo 11 elementos e 30 práticas relacionadas. O framework cobre um conjunto de práticas abrangentes o suficiente para auxiliar diferentes organizações que tenham interesse em atuar com mais de um modo de operação. / In the last decades, with the emergence of large organizations of information technology (IT) and the commoditization of IT products and services, the Market in general has perceived the opportunity to develop new solutions for their clients. In this context, aiming at the creation of an exploratory work environment and directed toward innovation, the adoption of more modern practices of IT management have caught the attention of executives and gained space in the organizations. The bimodal IT is characterized by two models of operation in place with distinct purposes: 1) Reliability and; 2) Agility. This study presents existing IT management practices in the market directed at different operation models of IT. The goal of the study is to propose a framework of IT management practices for Bimodal IT. The concepts of IT Governance, Bimodal IT, COBIT (Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies), ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library), CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration), PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge), Lean IT, DevOps, SCRUM and Project Model Canvas, serve as the structural base for better comprehension of the study The qualitative method used for this research was the case study where 10 interviews were applied with IT executives, documental research and participant observation was carried out in a Cooperative financial institution situated in Rio Grande do Sul. As a result, a bimodal IT management practice framework containing 12 elements and 30 related practices was proposed. The framework covers a set of practices broad enough to help different organizations that have an interest in working with more than one mode of operation.

Context: Mobile application stores like Google Play, Apple store, Windows store have over 3 million apps. Users download the applications from their respective stores and they generally prefer the apps with the highest ratings. In response to the present situation, application stores provided the categories like editor’s choice or top charts, providing better visibility for the applications. Customer reviews play such critical role in the development of the application and the organization, in such case there might be flawed reviews or biased opinions about the application due to many factors. The biased opinions and flawed reviews are likely to cause user review untrustworthiness. The reviews or ratings in the mobile application stores are used by the organizations to make the applications more efficient and more adaptable to the user. The context leads to importance of the user’s review trustworthiness and managing the trustworthiness in the user feedback by knowing the causes of mistrust. Hence, there is a need for a framework to understand the trustworthiness in the user given feedback. Objectives: In the following study the author aims for the accomplishment of the following objectives, firstly, exploring the causes of untrustworthiness in user feedback for an application in the mobile application stores such as google play store. Secondly, Exploring the effects of trustworthiness on the users and developers. Finally, the aim is to propose a framework for managing the trustworthiness in the feedback. Methods: To accomplish the objectives, author used qualitative research method. The data collection method is an interview-based survey that was conducted with 13 participants, to find out the causes of untrustworthiness in the user feedback from user’s perspective and developer’s perspective. Author follows thematic coding for qualitative data analysis. Results:Author identifies 11 codes from the description of the transcripts and explores the relationship among the trustworthiness with the causes. 11 codes were put into 4 themes, and a thematic network is created between the themes. The relations were then analyzed with cost-effect analysis. Conclusions: We conclude that 11 causes effect the trustworthiness according to user’s perspective and 9 causes effect the trustworthiness according to the developer’s perspective, from the analysis. Segregating the trustworthy feedback from the untrustworthy feedback is important for the developers, as the next releases should be planned based on that. Finally, an inclusion and exclusion criteria to help developers manage trustworthy user feedback is defined.

Trust is a major challenge to the consumer acceptance of e-commerce: the lack of trust is an important reason for the hesitant growth in e-commerce and for the reluctance of consumers to engage in online buying transaction. Communicating trustworthiness is therefore a major challenge companies encounter. This study concentrates on the various means communicating trustworthiness proposed by researchers. An overview of means is presented according to a buying transaction process life cycle spanning the four phases information, agreement, handling, and postpurchase. Besides enabling the categorization of the various means to develop consumer trust, the four phases in addition illuminate the dynamic aspect of trust development and allow the introduction of a simple measure to determine success in the domain of e-commerce by evaluating the repetitiveness of consumer transacting with the e-vendor. A web site analysis was conducted to evaluate the trust means usage in practice. The findings of the web site analysis indicate three general trends. First, the analyzed web sites hint at an absent exploitation of second and third degree information. Second, the results of the study obtained from the indicators regarding the later phases portray a lack of means usage during the handling and postpurchase phase. Third, the web site analysis points out multiple possibilities for e-vendors to adjust, improve, and implement additional trust means. In general, the discovered trends are an indication for e-vendors to adopt their strategies to employ trust means towards the relevant consumer perspective of the company.

This dissertation consists of three essays exploring the heterogeneity of gender differences in behavior across contrasting societies. Are women naturally wired to behave differently than men or is it the social context in which the gender roles operate that motivate their behavior? I study this question in the contexts of risk, trust, and trustworthiness, moral hazard and repayment behavior in microfinance. I use the approach of conducting controlled field experiments in neighboring matrilineal and patrilineal societies in rural India. The two societies differ in gender roles but are comparable otherwise. Understanding the societal and cultural factors that drive gender differences in behavior helps to prescribe optimally-targeted policy designs. The first essay evaluates the universal policy of gender targeting to mitigate microfinance loan defaults and studies the reasons for such gender differences in default. I design and conduct microfinance field experiments with individual and group liability treatments in comparable matrilineal and patrilineal societies in India. I observe a reversal of gender effect on loan default across the two societies. I find that women have a lower default in the patrilineal society but higher default in the matrilineal society compared to their male counterparts. I also find that group liability leads to moral hazard among the individual group members but reduces overall default due to risk sharing among them. My results suggest that while women are better clients on average, a universal policy of gender targeting to reduce defaults in microfinance might be suboptimal. The second essay builds on the findings of the first essay that group liability contracts lead to moral hazard among the borrowers. In this essay, I evaluate the policy of gender targeting to mitigate moral hazard problems in microfinance and study the underlying reasons for such gender differences in moral hazard. I address this question by following a similar methodology to the first essay. My experimental design allows decomposing the different moral hazard channels through which default occurs in microfinance and interact them with gender and types of societies (matrilineal and patrilineal). I find that women in matrilineal society are more prone to exhibit moral hazard behavior than patrilineal women. Based on my findings, I argue that the gender differences in moral hazard is driven by the difference in social context, norms and the gender roles between the two societies. The final essay examines what drives gender differences in trust and trustworthiness, by conducting trust experiments in neighboring matrilineal and patrilineal societies in India. I find that on average the matrilineal subjects are more trusting as well as more trustworthy than the patrilineal subjects, but there is a significant heterogeneity in gender effects. Women in matrilineal society are both less trusting and less trustworthy than patrilineal women, compared to their male counterparts. This finding holds true even after controlling for risk preference and other individual characteristics. My findings suggest that societal structures are crucially linked to the observed gender differences in trust and trustworthiness.