Lone star or team player?:The interrelationship of different identification foci and the role of self-presentation concerns

Work identity is important in the attraction and retention of staff, yet how the facets of such identity relate remains convoluted and unclear despite this being of interest to both scholars and practitioners. We use structural equation modeling to analyze empirical data from 144 employees in the United Kingdom's oil and gas industry, analyzing the nature and interrelationship of identification as individual-level (career advancement) and social-level (work group and organization) foci, as well as considering the two psychological self-presentation factors (value expression and social adjustment) that direct and drive identification processes. A dichotomy between individual and social components of work identity is found, revealing a strong association between both social-level foci of identification. Moreover, both components of work identity are found to be premised on different psychological factors, furthering our knowledge of the enmeshed nature of identity at work

Enhancing trust or reducing perceived risk, what matters more when launching a new product?

Using a collection of data among 490 participants from different companies in the field of medical engineering market, we contribute to the role of contact intensity by a business partner when launching new products by introducing trust as a mediator to the concept of perceived risk reduction to enhance the relationship commitment. The findings show that the common concept of risk reduction to enhance the relationship commitment is overrated. In detail, the results show first, that the influence of trust on the relationship commitment is decisive instead of reducing perceived risk by the customer. The contact intensity is only important to enhance trust which influences the relationship commitment in a positive way. Hence, managers should concentrate on the development of trust and not on the reduction of perceived risk of the customer. Second, our findings demonstrate that the attitude whether the customer is averse of affine towards innovations has no influence on the relationship between contact intensity and relationship commitment. This is obviously the opposite of the findings of most researchers in literature who usually state customers need different contacts of the seller to purchase a new product depending on their attitude towards innovations. </jats:p

Organizational resilience : how SUITS' local authorities were prepared to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic

This SUITS policy brief aims to highlight how the transformational process of the nine local authorities involved in SUITS into learning organizations made these cities far better prepared to cope with the challenges due to the pandemic than they would otherwise have been. Due to the higher levels of organizational resilience and the awareness of individuals' importance during such external crises, the nine local authorities were not just trying to react to the unforeseen challenges, but were able to act with a clear pathway and to use their experiences to facilitate their learning from recent years. Of course, the pandemic could not have been foreseen, but as SUITS local authorities are becoming learning organizations, they are enhancing their organizational capacity. In so doing, they have been learning a required resilience to reduce the "complexity and confusion - of what to do best" in the beginning of the crisis and to cope with the challenges. This advantage was of enormous relevance for the local authorities

Vulnerability and Trust in Leader-Follower Relationships

Purpose – Vulnerability is a concept that lies at the core of the most prevalent academic trust definitions. Accordingly, a vast amount of scholars refers to vulnerability when studying trust. Surprisingly, there is almost no conceptual nor empirical work explicitly directed at understanding vulnerability itself. The purpose of this paper is to summarize and critique the existing base of knowledge of vulnerability with a particular focus on the leader-follower relationship and to open avenues for future research. Design/methodology/approach – In the process of a very systematic literature search, the authors identified 49 studies that refer to vulnerability when studying trust at the interpersonal level. The authors coded the literature into conceptualizations, antecedents and consequences of vulnerability – with a particular focus on the leader-follower relationship. Findings – The authors introduce a theoretical framework which allows the authors to structure the rather fuzzy discussed concept of vulnerability. The development of such a theoretical framework allows the authors to distinguish between trusting beliefs and actual trusting behaviour so that it is possible to separate the constructs of willingness-to-be-vulnerable and actual vulnerability. Research limitations/implications – With the help of the developed framework, the authors point to the need for more work on vulnerability in order to take the study of trust to the next level. In this respect, the authors formulate several propositions that should be tested in future research. Practical implications – Practitioners are made aware of the need to risk willingness to be vulnerable as a base for trusting behaviour. There is no way around being willing to be vulnerable. Originality/value – This literature review provides a holistic understanding of the concept of vulnerability. The intention is to show the different understandings and interpretations of this term within the literature and identify which antecedents and consequences are related to the concept of vulnerability. </jats:sec

Editorial: Sharing Economy and the Issue of (Dis)trust

Economy has changed; while in earlier times the possession of goods has been important to consumers, nowadays consumers rather try to have access to them (Belk, 2014). The so-called sharing economy enables consumers to share goods and services, such as rooms (cf. Airbnb), mobility services (cf. Blablacar), or self-produced vegetables (cf. community gardens). The Internet was key to the development of the sharing economy; with this achievement, the sharing economy expanded (Puschmann and Alt, 2016), and research on the sharing economy accumulated. Trust is a fundamental aspect that keeps the sharing economy running (Möhlmann, 2015). Trust means that consumers make themselves vulnerable toward different actors (Rousseau et al., 1998). There needs to be trust toward the sharing organization (e.g., Airbnb), toward consumers offering their goods and services, toward other consumers and also toward the technology providing the platform. Several articles (e.g., Kong et al., 2020) address the important issue of trust in the sharing economy, but the more or less antagonist of trust, i.e., distrust, has not been addressed in research so far. Distrust is often seen as an individual’s unwillingness to accept vulnerability to the actions of other people based on pervasive negative perceptions and expectations of the other people’s motives, intentions, or behaviors (Bijlsma-Frankema et al., 2015). The relevance of distrust often resonates implicitly in the publications on trust in the sharing economy (e.g., Möhlmann, 2015), but was not explicitly addressed in previous research. For that reason, the current Research Topic opens up a forum, in which research not only on trust but also on distrust in the sharing economy can gain center stage