Creating Spaces for Justice-Oriented Research: Critical Reflections of a Researcher/Teacher and Her Advisor

This article explores the critical reflections of a doctoral candidate and her advisor on the design and implementation of the candidate’s study, how space was created for such scholarship, and the challenges and catalysts for successfully navigating and shifting trenchant epistemological and methodological positions. Adopting an autoethnographic stance, we examine our navigation of the conceptual, structural and interpersonal tensions of doing critical research in a mainstream institution. The results highlight our experiences in a) re-conceptualizing the purpose of research by moving beyond doing “hit-and-run” research to research as praxis in marginalized communities, b) re-conceptualizing data gathering and analysis as justice-oriented rather than as “methodolatry” and c) understanding reflexively the tensions caused in the final stages of the dissertation as the novice advisor privileged a product-orientation over a person-orientation in her mentoring stance. This study underscores the importance of ensuring that humanizing pedagogy is employed consistently and unambiguously through the doctoral advising process.  Keywords: doctoral advising, justice-oriented research, critical doctoral research, critical reflection, critical pedagogy/advisin

Antecedents of trust across foci: a comparative study of Turkey and China

Instead of importing Western models of interpersonal trust, we adopted a qualitative approach to understand trust relationships from indigenous cultures' perspectives. We examined trust relationships directed at different foci in the organization (supervisor, peer, and subordinate) in two different countries, Turkey and China. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 Turkish and 30 Chinese employees working for a variety of large-scale organizations located in Istanbul, Turkey and Shenzhen, China. We report the content analysis of trust-building critical incidents narrated by the respondents. While the general antecedents of Ability, Benevolence, and Integrity were found to exist in both countries, Benevolence, with its culture-specific manifestations, played a very important role in trust-building across multiple foci in both countries. We also found that trust relationships in these two contexts tended to go beyond the professional domain, and to involve sharing of personal time, information, and space. Drawing on this evidence, we propose a trust-building process that is more affective in nature and which straddles both work and non-work domains

Mediated behavioural change in human-machine networks: exploring network characteristics, trust and motivation

Human-machine networks pervade much of contemporary life. Network change is the product of structural modifications along with differences in participant be-havior. If we assume that behavioural change in a human-machine network is the result of changing the attitudes of participants in the network, then the question arises whether network structure can affect participant attitude. Taking citizen par-ticipation as an example, engagement with relevant stakeholders reveals trust and motivation to be the major objectives for the network. Using a typology to de-scribe network state based on multiple characteristic or dimensions, we can pre-dict possible behavioural outcomes in the network. However, this has to be medi-ated via attitude change. Motivation for the citizen participation network can only increase in line with enhanced trust. The focus for changing network dynamics, therefore, shifts to the dimensional changes needed to encourage increased trust. It turns out that the coordinated manipulation of multiple dimensions is needed to bring about the desired shift in attitude.Comment: Paper submitted to SocInfo, organised by the Oxford Internet Institute, September 201

A Storm in a Tea-Cup? 'Making a Difference' in Two Sure Start Children's Centres

Sure Start Children's Centres were central to the last UK Labour government in improving outcomes for children and families. Yet, participation by those who 'ought' to attend was and remains a focus of concern. Using the work of Foucault, this paper explores parental participation in two Centres to examine how 'government operates at a distance', through the everyday interactions of those who inhabit these spaces. In exploring micro-practices, the humble cup of tea can be seen, not only as a small act of caring but a site of power and struggle over what these spaces meant to parents and practitioners

Leader trustworthy behavior and organizational trust:the role of the immediate manager for cultivating trust

Drawing from both trust-building theory and interpersonal trust literature, we investigate how trust between a leader and follower may be leveraged to influence organizational trust. We also explore the mediating mechanisms of this link and test a potential moderator. A cross-sectional, multi-foci design was adopted and participants were 201 employees within a public sector organization. Leader trustworthy behavior was found to predict organizational trust, mediated by trustworthiness perceptions and trust in the leader. Support for the boundary condition was found; namely, when leaders were more senior, the relationship between trustworthy behavior and organizational trust was stronger. The findings suggest that leaders can meaningfully influence organizational trust perceptions through the enactment of trustworthy behavior, although the strength of this effect varied as a function of their position

Close communications: Hedge funds, brokers and the emergence of herding

We examine how communication, evaluation and decision-making practices among competing market actors contribute to the establishment of herding and whether this has impact on market wide phenomena such as prices and risk. Data is collected from interviews and observations with hedge fund industry participants in Europe, the United States and Asia. We examine both contemporaneous and biographical data, finding that decision making relies on an elaborate two-tiered structure of connections among hedge fund managers and between them and brokers. This structure is underpinned by idea sharing and development between competing hedge funds leading to ‘expertisebased’ herding and an increased probability of over-embeddedness. We subsequently present a case study demonstrating the role that communication between competing hedge funds plays in the creation of herding and show that such trades affect prices by introducing an additional risk: the disregarding of information from sources outside the trusted connections

Institutional trustworthiness and national security governance:Evidence from six European countries

[EN] This article examines the relationship between the institutional trustworthiness of security agencies in the context of data¿intensive security practices. It focuses on the public's acceptance of the way digital surveillance technologies feed into large¿scale security data analytics. Using the case of deep packet inspection (DPI), survey data gathered in six European countries (n¿=¿1,202) demonstrates that security agencies' institutional trustworthiness directly and indirectly influences public acceptance of DPI. Against a backdrop of declining public trust in government and a climate of intense international terrorist threat, governments around the world are appealing to citizens to trade privacy for enhanced security. This article supports calls for security agencies and their respective governments to engage with the democratic process to enrich security and privacy at all levels of public security governance and for the common good

Transformational leadership and employee well-being : the mediating role of trust in the leader and self-efficacy

Although transformational leadership (TL) is considered a kind of positive leadership, which can elevate followers in the long term, the mechanism of how TL influences employee well-being remains a relatively untouched area. Based on survey data collected from 745 employees from the People\u27s Republic of China (Beijing, n= 297; Hong Kong, n= 448), results revealed that employees\u27 trust in the leader and self-efficacy partially mediated the influence of TL on job satisfaction, and fully mediated the influence of TL on perceived work stress and stress symptoms. Implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed

From dilemmatic struggle to legitimized indifference: expatriates' host country language learning and its impact on the expatriate-HCE relationship

We address the lack of knowledge concerning the role of host country languages in multinational corporations based on an inductive qualitative study involving 70 interviews with Nordic expatriates and host country employees (HCE) in China. Building on the strongly discrepant views of expatriates and HCEs, we demonstrate how expatriates’ willingness to learn and use the host country language lead to different types of expatriate-HCE relationships, ranging from harmonious to distant or segregated. In doing so, we emphasize the subtle and fragile connection between expatriates’ attitude towards HCEs’ mother tongue and trust formation in addition to the construction of superiority-inferiority relationships