The 5th Workshop on Trust Within and Between Organizations marks the 10th anniversary of FINT – the informal association of trust researchers. In the 10 years of its existence FINT has welcomed 350 members from over 20 countries. FINT has organized five international workshops on trust research. It has been affiliated with five EGOS (European Group of Organization Studies) tracks, two EURAM (European Academy of Management) tracks, and various AOM (Academy of Management) symposia. FINT core members have won funding for an ESF (European Science Foundation) workshop 'Trust and the Human Resource Management Cycle' and two workshop series sponsored by the ESRC(UK Economics and Social Research Council) on the themes of 'Building, Maintaining and Repairing Trust Across Cultures' and 'Trust and HRM: theory and practice'. Furthermore the new Standard Working Group at EGOS on trust in organizations (see later in this newsletter) is co-run by FINT members and is affiliated with FINT in a variety of ways.
The new president, Antoinette Weibel, will co-govern FINT together with the new board – Sandro Castaldo, Don Ferrin, Guido Moellering, Richard Priem and Denise Skinner – and will be supported by communication officer Roxanne Zolin. The Board members would like to express their deepest thanks to Katinka and Sim. Katinka organized in a then-venture spirit the first workshop on trust and from there the FINT community grew. Sim has supported her as co-chair from the second workshop onwards. Without the efforts of Katinka and Sim, it is doubtful that FINT would have come into existence and it certainly would not have flourished in the way that it has.
It takes a great woman to start and build such a community but, as we know from research on entrepreneurs, it takes an even greater one to be willing to hand over its destiny. In Madrid, Antoinette accepted the honor of taking over as President and appointed a Board of highly experienced FINT members to work with her. We are looking forward to taking FINT into the new decade. As a first step we would like to make FINT more visible and are thus in the process of designing a new homepage. We need your help here – Roxanne will be asking you to suggest ideas for a new logo for the homepage. This homepage will also allow us to communicate more directly with you.
The
new Board selected three priority areas to focus on. First we would
like to develop FINT into an inclusive trust community by creating
events that attract both junior and senior researchers from a multitude
of disciplines. Second we would like to ensure that decision processes
are transparent and give FINT members the opportunity to be involved on
an ongoing basis. Finally, in the longer term we seek to
professionalize FINT and to create a legal entity with statutes, which
enables us to attract sponsorship money for the research community more
easily.
Short introduction of the new board:
Antoinette Weibel has been a FINT member from the first hours. She has organized and co-organized various subtracks at FINT and EGOS and FINT-affiliated symposia at AOM. Antoinette Weibel is full professor of Management Studies at the University of Liechtenstein and dean of the undergraduate studies in management. Her current research interest is on regulations and trust in systems, stakeholder trust in the organization, rewards and trust, and rules and happiness.
Sandro Castaldo has also been a FINT member from the beginning and has chaired various subtracks at the workshop. He will be the co-chair of the next workshop which will take place in Italy in March 2012. He is currently Full Professor of Management at Bocconi University and former Chairman of the Marketing department at Sda Bocconi. His current research interest is mainly on trust in market and channel relationships, in buyer-seller dyads and consumer fields.
Don Ferrin joined FINT at the fourth workshop as an active member who gave a keynote on The Effects of National-Societal culture on Trust, and co-chaired a track on Trust and Boundaries at the fourth workshop and a track on Trust in the Context of Negotiation and Conflict Resolution. He has also presented a keynote address in the 2006 ESRC series in Durham, UK, co-chaired a trust track in EGOS Bergen 2006 and over the years has organized numerous AOM symposia and professional development workshops on topics such as trust repair and practitioner applications of trust research. Don is Associate Professor at Singapore Management University. His research focuses on the effects and functions of trust, trust development, trust repair, trust networks, effects of culture on trust, and trust in the context of negotiation.
Guido Moellering has also been a first-hour member of FINT and launched the “FINTnews” quarterly newsletter which he edited 2004-2007. He has organized trust-tracks at EURAM 2003 and EGOS 2005 and 2006. He is currently a Senior Research Associate at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, Germany, and is best known in the trust research community for his work on the leap of faith in trust and on trust in the Chinese business context.
Richard Priem has joined FINT at the fourth workshop as an active member who has chaired two sub-tracks. Richard L. Priem is the Robert L. and Sally S. Manegold Professor of Management in the Lubar School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA. He is founding director of the M&I Marshall & Ilsley Corporation Center for Business Ethics and is a regular visiting professor at LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome, Italy. Research interests include: corporate governance, illegal behavior, strategy making processes, demand-side strategies, group- and organization-level trust, and organizational theory.
Denise Skinner has been a FINT member since contributing to the first workshop. She has organized various sub-tracks at FINT, co-convened an EGOS track on trust, co-chaired the ESF workshop on Trust and the HRM Management Cycle,the ESRC semnar series on 'Building, Maintaining and Repairing Trust Across Cultures' and 'Trust and HRM: theory and practice' and co chaired an Academy of Management symposium on Trust and the HR Cycle and a PDW on Organisational Trust. Denise is currently Dean of the Faculty of Business, Environment nand Society at Coventry University, UK.
Chief Communications Officer
Roxanne Zolin has been a FINT member since attending the second Trust Workshop while doing her PhD in Trust in Cross-functional and Geographically Distributed Teamwork at Stanford University. Roxanne took over Editorship of FINTnews at the Trust Workshop in 2008 where she chaired a sub-track on Trust in Entrepreneurship. Roxanne has organized two Symposiums on Trust at the Academy of Management. She is Associate Professor in the School of Management at the Queensland University of Technology, Australia.