Exploring the Chemistry of Datafication Control – Pathways for a Trust-Enabling Use of Smart Workplace Technology

Organizations experiment with how smarttechnology can be used to manage employees since before COVID-19 and the possibilities seem almost limitless. However, the question of how this can be achieved without impairing the so-needed trust inside organizations is yet to answer. Hence, in this study, we employ a crisp-set QCA to investigate what trustenabling datafication control configurations look like. Drawing on unique survey data from Switzerland, we show that datafication control can go hand in hand with trust if organizations make efforts for employeecentricity. Further, we can reveal four distinct ways of how organizations can implement employee-centricity to mitigate possible trust-impairing signals that stem from augmented data-gathering and analysis capabilities. Our results contribute to the still heated debate on the duality of control and trust. They also help leaders to navigate through the unmanageable multitude of possible and even trust-toxic combinations

The Bermuda Triangle of Leadership in the AI Era? Emerging Trust Implications From “Two-Leader-Situations” in the Eyes of Employees

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) algorithms are changing the work in many ways. One hitherto little-studied area is how these technologies are impacting leader-employee relationships, particularly employees’ trust relationships in their “flesh-and-blood” leaders. In this paper, we discuss how algorithms change the nature of leadership when some leadership functions become automated. As a consequence, employees will often find themselves in a “two-leader-situation” with resulting frictions, that create novel leadership focus areas. Three situations, in particular, can be trust-problematic in the eyes of followers: the triad relationship might (1) make responsibilities blur, (2) create conflicting decisions of human leaders and algorithms, and (3) make employees’ voice unheard. We argue that these situations can undermine employee perceptions of leaders\u27 trustworthiness as followers might start to question a leaders’ ability, benevolence, and integrity if leaders do not understand these novel situations

Distrust: The Neglected Construct in Stakeholder Relations

Stakeholder literature has only recently turned to analyze troublesome relationships. Based on our literature review we propose that the introduction of stakeholder distrust as “unwillingness to be vulnerable” is distinct from related constructs such as suspicion, negative reciprocity, and low trust. Furthermore, we develop a stakeholder distrust model by determining the most proximate antecedents and distrust-induced consequences. Finally, we offer first insights for further research on how stakeholder distrust as a distinct concept can enrich stakeholder analysis, lead to a new perspective on stakeholder engagement practices and enable a profound discussion of stakeholder relationship dynamics

The Road to Trust. A vignette study on the determinants of citizens' trust in the European Comission

This article analyses the determinants of citizens' trust in the European Commission. We examined four predictors of citizens' trust in political institutions: political participation, value congruence, performance outcomes and attributability of performance outcomes. We argue that these factors impact trust in the European Commission, which is a necessary precondition for making a risky investment and willingness to pay taxes, which can be understood as behavioural consequences of trust. To examine our hypotheses we have implemented a vignette study. Our analyses show that value congruence, the European Commission's perceived performance and attributability impact risky investments via trust, as expected. Political participation exerts a direct significant influence on risky investments.publishe