10 research outputs found

    ‘We ate bread and salt together’: communal cooking and eating as a model for developing trust between hosts and asylum seekers in London, UK

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    This paper explores the ways in which communal cooking and eating can offer an environment in which trust can be built between asylum seekers and host nationals. The pervasive culture of generalised mistrust towards refugees and asylum seekers that currently exists in the UK compels us to find ways in which trust can be (re)built. Trust is conceptualised as a two-part journey that begins from a starting point of a ‘posture of mistrust’ that is transformed into one of trust. This posture then lays the foundation for an ‘assessment of trustworthiness’ that can lead to a reciprocal trust relationship. These two stages represent two broad approaches to trust in the literature. First, that of trust as a pre-conscious, emotionally-driven, largely intuitive process and, second, that of trust as a cognitive, information driven, deliberate decision. Features of cooking and eating together were identified in the literature, mapped onto the components that have been identified in the literature as being necessary for trust, and explored in interviews and observations across several communal cook-and-eat events in London, UK. The offerings of communal cooking and eating include social contact, routine, normality, physical and emotional safety and a sense of home. Meals are also explored as a means to reclaim autonomy and personal and cultural identity in a universally acceptable context, in addition to having the power to evoke strong memories. In exploring the overlaps between trust and food, this paper concludes that communal cooking and eating can offer a rich sensory and social environment in which trusting relationships can form between asylum seekers and host nationals. In addition, it is proposed that shared meals offer a simple, accessible and culturally-appropriate context in which trust can be fostered between asylum seekers and those conducting research with them

    ILR Faculty Publications 2011-12

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    ILR Faculty Publications 2008-09

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    The production of scholarly research continues to be one of the primary missions of the ILR School. During a typical academic year, ILR faculty members published or had accepted for publication over 25 books, edited volumes, and monographs, 170 articles and chapters in edited volumes, numerous book reviews. In addition, a large number of manuscripts were submitted for publication, presented at professional association meetings, or circulated in working paper form. Our faculty's research continues to find its way into the very best industrial relations, social science and statistics journals.Faculty_Publications_2008_09.pdf: 36 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

    ILR Faculty Publications 2012-13

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    The production of scholarly research continues to be one of the primary missions of the ILR School. During a typical academic year, ILR faculty members published or had accepted for publication over 25 books, edited volumes, and monographs, 170 articles and chapters in edited volumes, numerous book reviews. In addition, a large number of manuscripts were submitted for publication, presented at professional association meetings, or circulated in working paper form. Our faculty's research continues to find its way into the very best industrial relations, social science and statistics journals.Faculty_Publications_2012_13.pdf: 77 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

    Trust in exporting relationships: the case of SMEs in Ghana

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    In this era of globalisation, firms and their managers are increasingly interested in building relationships with customers, suppliers and other stakeholders in order to successfully grow and compete. Trust has been found to be a defining factor in building up networks and relationships which firms use in economic exchanges both at national and international levels. However, the role of trust in the context of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) internationalisation is a recent phenomenon of academic inquiry that has not been widely studied particularly in the context of developing countries. Hence, this study aims to fill this knowledge gap by investigating the processes of development, use, violation and repair of trust in exporting SME relationships in a less developed African country, Ghana. At the theoretical level the study draws mostly on three perspectives: embeddedness, entrepreneurship and psychic distance. At the empirical level, this research uses a case study of 24 exporting SMEs in Ghana to study this subject in detail. The findings show that entrepreneurs had built and used personalised relationships while avoiding formal contracts and the courts in their internationalisation activities. They had mostly relied on institutional forms operating in parallel to formal state-based and legal systems. These are shown to be hybrid forms drawing on traditional cultural institutions such as chieftaincy and religion, combined with forms of corporations and cooperatives. The findings further reveal how organisations violate and repair trust when crossing cultural boundaries, looking at the particular issues that face smaller businesses. Particularly, it shows that culture is an important factor in trust based relations and therefore the concept of trust violation is socially constructed. While some aspects of networks and trust literature are confirmed, other aspects are refuted showing that context impacts on the processes of relationships and trust building, violation and repair. This study therefore contributes to the ongoing development of a theoretical understanding on networking, relationship building and trust in international entrepreneurship. Particularly it emphasises the importance of understanding cultural contexts in entrepreneurship research

    The emergence of social innovation within the social economy: the case of social enterprises in England

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    Social enterprises (SEs), such as development trusts (DTs) in England, are contributing to solve some of the world´s most entrenched problems, recurring to innovative ideas and proposals that tend to outperform traditional forms of social intervention. This research seeks to unveil the ways in which such innovative ideas emerge, and to do so, it has borrowed theories from the mainstream innovation literature, from the emerging body of work on social innovation and from existing approaches to understand inter-organisational relationships and networks. An analysis of the perceived meaning of the innovation concept among SE practitioners is provided in first place, to then move onto exploring the starting points, the drivers and the processes that lead to the generation and the subsequent implementation of innovative ideas or solutions. Closer examination of 12 cases of innovative social enterprises allows the identification of five non-exclusive sources from where innovative ideas and solutions emerge within the social economy, namely: an accurate understanding of needs, frustration, inspiration leading to replication, networks of different types and openness or serendipity. The findings included here can help others in the process of developing and implementing new solutions to social problems and they contribute to theory building efforts in the fields of social entrepreneurship and social innovation

    The practices of strategic arms control negotiations: insights from a diplomacy of trusting in the US-Russian relations

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    This thesis offers a new understanding of the relationship between trust and verification in nuclear arms control negotiations. Combining insights from psychology, sociology, and social constructivism in IR, it develops a new conceptual framework to explain the importance of trust in shaping leaders’ decision-making during nuclear arms control negotiations. The key proposition is that trust can be conceived as a practice – the diplomacy of trusting – and that only by interrogating the diplomatic process by which actors come to trust through negotiations can a proper understanding be gained of how the verification provisions that make an agreement possible are decided. The concept of the Diplomacy of Trusting is predicated on the idea that trust is created and performed through the practices of both the trustor (the actor who trusts) and the trustee (the actor who is trusted). It is this co-creation of trust that constitutes the diplomacy of trusting. To demonstrate the framework’s utility in providing a better understanding of how agreements are reached on verification in strategic nuclear arms control negotiations, it is applied to three case studies: the 1979 SALT II Treaty; the 2002 Moscow Treaty (SORT), and the 2010 New START Treaty
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