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We develop and test theory regarding the effect of CEO paranoia, defined as stable tendencies toward suspicion, feelings of ill will or resentment, mistrust, and belief in external control or influence, on firm stakeholder engagement. We theorize that because CEOs higher in paranoia have tendencies toward hypervigilance and the biases of self-as-target and sinister attributions they typically avoid engagement with external stakeholders. Further, we argue that CEOs higher in paranoia are subject to paranoid activation when confronted with trait-relevant cues that confirm suspicions of being targeted by a malevolent external entity (here, regulatory rulings or rival attacks), thus eliciting a shift away from avoidance to a more aggressive engagement with those stakeholders. To do so, we develop a content-analytic measure of CEO paranoia following both theory and evidence in psychology and methodological best practices, finding evidence that broadly supports our premise. In total, our study draws attention to how the manifestation of CEO paranoia changes the way CEOs engage stakeholders over time, contributing to understanding in multiple ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Undoubtedly, social media interactions have created phenomenal opportunities for firms, consumers, and brands to engage with one another across the world. These interactions provide marketers with valuable tools to foster deeper connections, personalize experiences, and co-create value with consumers. However, they also pose challenges, including privacy concerns, data security, and misinformation. Drawing from the commitment-trust theory, this research identifies four major opportunities and four significant challenges associated with social media interactions that influence consumer commitment and trust. By developing an integrative theoretical framework and exploring the positive and negative aspects of social media interactions, this research identifies ways to enhance commitment and trust among stakeholders. The research concludes by discussing implications for marketing theory and practice and outlining future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over five decades, Shelby D. Hunt emerged again and again to contribute to our understanding of the relationships between parties in marketing's exchange relationships. Hunt employed power dependence theory, commitment-trust theory and perspectives provided by other theories to assist marketers in understanding the complexities of relationships in marketing. Along the way, he helped many of his co-authors develop their own theory-building, research and storytelling skills. This commentary provides a perspective on these contributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2023, an average of 2.5 local newspapers shut down each week. This year seems to be following a similar trend. With fewer professional journalists keeping watch over politicians and the process of voting—and an information landscape that is rife with falsehoods and propaganda—democracy is under threat. An evolving digital media landscape and the loss of trust in journalism has brought the industry to a reckoning point. In addition to charitable interest in supporting local news and legislation to protect the industry, journalists and key players are experimenting with different structures and business models. However, it's unclear which, if any, of these efforts will ultimately prove successful. But for journalism to continue standing as an essential pillar of democracy, one or more of these endeavors will need to emerge as viable—or at least lay the groundwork for other models that can succeed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we investigate whether and how trust between board members and the CEO (board–CEO trust) affects the performance of mergers and acquisitions. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we find that firms with higher levels of board–CEO trust exhibit poor M&A performance. High trust is associated with low acquisition announcement returns, long-term stock return performance, and post-deal operating performance. This negative effect of board–CEO trust is more pronounced among acquiring companies prone to agency problems. Our results suggest that, in the institutional setting of corporate boards, high trust can be too much of a good thing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online retailers worldwide invest beyond their core business of retailing to offer their own delivery services (ODS) to deliver products to customers' homes through their own logistics network. How does this shift to ODS affect customers' behaviors and sales performance? When and why do retailers venture beyond their core competence to offer ODS? To explore these questions, the authors analyze 250,055 customer transactions over 10 years across 416 cities and 49 product categories from JD, a major online retailer in China. Using difference-in-differences models, causal mediation analysis, and the synthetic control method, they find that ODS increases customers' monthly spending by 7.8% and grows city-level sales by 11.9%. This study is the first to quantify the sales impact of ODS and shed light on when and why it works. The findings reveal that ODS has greater value for markets with lower trust levels, infrequent customers, high-risk product categories, and consumers who prefer the focal retailer (versus that of third-party sellers). Causal mediation analysis further reveals that ODS not only improves delivery quality but also builds customer trust, which together increase customers' monthly spending, purchase frequency, and the number of items ordered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As customers increasingly rely on online reviews for making consumption decisions, the dangers arising from misinformation and fakery have become an acute source of concern for consumers, firms, and society at large. Many online review platforms claim a role as guardians of trust in the information exchange process. Yet, little is known about the practices firms can utilize to design platforms that build and safeguard consumer trust. The authors draw on governance and identity disclosure literature streams to propose five practices that mitigate fakery and build trust in the platform: monitoring, exposure, community building, status endowment, and identity disclosure. Five studies (1) establish the individual and joint effects these practices have on platform trust, (2) identify the mediating processes by which the practices build trust, (3) verify the ecological value of the conceptual framework, (4) provide support of the salience of the practices, and (5) show how the practices build trust above and beyond review content–level characteristics. Interaction effects suggest that exposure, community building, and status endowment obviate the need for identity disclosure in building platform trust, a finding that mitigates related privacy concerns. Collectively, the findings can improve platform design, enabling review platforms to fulfill their promise of mitigating fakery and increasing trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Substantial evidence indicates that medical mistrust, resulting from experiences with discrimination and marginalisation, is a determinant of health disparities in minority populations. However, this research is largely limited to the US and other industrialised countries. To broaden our understanding of the role of medical mistrust on health-care decision making, we conducted a study on healthcare experiences and perceptions in a rural, underserved indigenous community in northwest Namibia (n = 86). Mixing semi-structured interview questions with the medical mistrust index (MMI), we aim to determine the relevance of the MMI in a non-industrialised population and compare index scores with reports of healthcare experiences. We find that medical mistrust is a salient concept in this community, mapping onto negative healthcare experiences and perceptions of discrimination. Reported healthcare experiences indicate that perceived incompetence, maltreatment and discrimination drive mistrust of medical personnel. However, reporting of recent healthcare experiences are generally positive. Our results indicate that the concept of medical mistrust can be usefully applied to communities in the Global South. These populations, like minority communities in the US, translate experiences of discrimination and marginalisation into medical mistrust. Understanding these processes can help address health disparities and aid in effective public health outreach in underserved populations.

Instagram, with over 516 million (Forbes, 2024) users in India as of 2023, is significant in shaping the political opinions of young people. The platform's focus on visual content and social engagement has transformed it from a simple photo-sharing app into a powerful space for political expression and discussion. While this opens new avenues for political participation, it also raises concerns about misinformation, polarization, and its impact on mental health. By focusing on lived experiences, this research seeks to uncover the criteria young people use to evaluate political content, the role Instagram plays in either bridging or widening political divides and the impact these interactions have on their mental health and personal relationships.

The entrustment framework redirects assessment from considering only trainees competence to decision-making about their readiness to perform clinical tasks independently. Since trainees and supervisors both contribute to entrustment decisions, we examined the cognitive and affective factors that underly their negotiation of trust, and whether trainee demographic characteristics may bias them. Using a document analysis approach, we adapted large language models (LLMs) to examine feedback dialogs (N = 24,187, each with an associated entrustment rating) between medical student trainees and their clinical supervisors. We compared how trainees and supervisors differentially documented feedback dialogs about similar tasks by identifying qualitative themes and quantitatively assessing their correlation with entrustment ratings. Supervisors themes predominantly reflected skills related to patient presentations, while trainees themes were broader-including clinical performance and personal qualities. To examine affect, we trained an LLM to measure feedback sentiment. On average, trainees used more negative language (5.3% lower probability of positive sentiment, p

This study explored the classification experiences and views of Para Alpine skiers with visual impairment. Data from 11 interviews were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis to generate three themes: Suitability—The skiers questioned the suitability of the visual measurements, testing environment, and the information they received regarding classification; Exclusivity—Skiers felt certain aspects of the system remain exclusive due to the restrictions of sport classes and lack of the athlete voice; and (Dis)trust—Skiers felt distrust in those implementing the system and in other athletes due to intentional misrepresentation. Speculation surrounding this resulted in the skiers' feeling doubt in their own classification. While there is not a "one size fits all" approach to classification, understanding skiers' experiences can be a vital first step and will help to guide future research into the evolution of this sport's classification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a novel perspective on trust in artificial intelligence (AI) systems, focusing on the transfer of user trust in AI creators to trust in AI systems. Using the agentic information systems (IS) framework, we investigate the role of AI alignment and steerability in trust transference. Through four randomized experiments, we probe three key alignment-related attributes of AI systems: creator-based steerability, user-based steerability, and autonomy. Results indicate that creator-based steerability amplifies trust transference from AI creator to AI system, while user-based steerability and autonomy diminish it. Our findings suggest that AI alignment efforts should consider the entity with which the AI goals and values should be aligned and highlight the need for research to theorize from a triadic view encompassing the user, the AI system, and its creator. Given the diversity in individual goals and values, we recommend that developers move beyond the prevailing "one-size-fits-all" alignment strategy. Our findings contribute to trust transference theory by highlighting the boundary conditions under which trust transference breaks down or holds in the emerging human-AI environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an attempt to combat fake news, policymakers in many countries are considering mandating the disclosure of artificial intelligence (AI) recommendations of social media news articles. We used two randomized controlled experiments to investigate the effects of labeling social media news stories as recommended by AI. Our results show that an AI recommendation reduced belief in true news articles and had no material effect on belief in fake news. In contrast, a recommendation by an expert increased belief in true news articles, but had no effect for fake news articles. A friend recommendation had no effect for fake articles and inconsistent effects for true articles. Belief that an article was true led to news engagement (liking, commenting, sharing), but an AI recommendation weakened this relationship, making confirmation bias the primary factor influencing engagement. The trustworthiness of the recommender only partially explained these effects, which suggests that there are other theoretical factors at work. This study reveals that the explicit labeling of AI curation of social media news stories does not help combat fake news, but instead is likely to backfire and have unintended negative effects by decreasing the belief of and engagement with true news articles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that a society's level of social trust influences employers' hiring strategies. Employers can focus either on applicants' potential and select on foundational skills (e.g., social skills, math skills) or on their readiness and select on more-advanced skills (e.g., pricing a derivative). The higher (lower) the social trust—people's trust in their fellow members of society—the more (less) employers are willing to invest in employees and grant them role flexibility. Employers in higher-trust societies are therefore more attentive to applicants' potential, focusing more on foundational skills than on advanced skills. We empirically test this theory by using a novel dataset of more than 50 million job postings from the 28 European Union countries. We find that the higher a country's social trust, the more its employers require foundational skills instead of advanced skills. Our identification strategy takes advantage of multinational firms in our sample and uses measures of bilateral (country-to-country) trust to predict job requirements, while including an instrumental variable and fixed effects on country, year, employer, and occupation. These findings suggest a novel pathway by which social trust shapes employment practices and organizational strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Contemporary Accounting Research is the property of Canadian Academic Accounting Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Trust is one of the highly important concepts of consumer research; yet it is characterized by a striking lack of generalizations and consensus regarding the relative strength of its antecedents, consequences, and moderators. To close this important gap, the current research reports a comprehensive large-scale meta-analysis shedding light on a wide variety of the antecedents, consequences, and moderators of the individual consumer's trust and their relative importance. Empirical generalizations are based on 2,147 effect sizes from 549 studies across 469 manuscripts in numerous disciplines, representing a total of 324,834 respondents in 71 countries over a five-decade span (1970–2020). The key findings are thus that (1) integrity-based (vs. reliability-based) antecedents are more effective in driving trust, and (2) trust is more effective in improving primarily attitudinal (vs. primarily behavioral) outcomes. Moderation analyses unpack further heterogeneity. Notably, both integrity-based and reliability-based antecedents have become stronger drivers of consumer trust in recent years. Theoretical and practical contributions are discussed in addition to advancing important future directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a grounded theory study of two prominent performing arts organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic, we develop theory about how organizations respond to adversity over time. Building on research on resilience, resourcefulness, and crisis management, we induce a process model that unpacks the mechanisms and dynamics that enable organizations to act resiliently. We find that organizations approach adversity using two types of resourcefulness. Promotive resourcefulness focuses on opportunities from adversity, which leads to acting resiliently. We show how promotive resourcefulness becomes sustained over time by endogenously producing resources—crisis agency, trust, and hopefulness—which expands an organization's identity and leads to resilient acts. In contrast, preventative resourcefulness focuses on minimizing worst-case outcomes, which leads to a lost organizational identity and relatively weak adversity adjustment. We find that preventative resourcefulness becomes part of cycles that erode trust, limit crisis agency, and generate hopelessness. Additionally, we explain how financial, emotional, and operational updating can shift preventative to promotive resourcefulness, allowing organizations to act resiliently later in a crisis. Our findings unpack critical mechanisms and processes that explain whether and how organizations act resiliently over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research explores prospective determinants of trust in the recommendations of artificial agents regarding decisions to kill, using a novel visual challenge paradigm simulating threat-identification (enemy combatants vs. civilians) under uncertainty. In Experiment 1, we compared trust in the advice of a physically embodied versus screen-mediated anthropomorphic robot, observing no effects of embodiment; in Experiment 2, we manipulated the relative anthropomorphism of virtual robots, observing modestly greater trust in the most anthropomorphic agent relative to the least. Across studies, when any version of the agent randomly disagreed, participants reversed their threat-identifications and decisions to kill in the majority of cases, substantially degrading their initial performance. Participants subjective confidence in their decisions tracked whether the agent (dis)agreed, while both decision-reversals and confidence were moderated by appraisals of the agents intelligence. The overall findings indicate a strong propensity to overtrust unreliable AI in life-or-death decisions made under uncertainty.

Current interventions to combat misinformation, including fact-checking, media literacy tips and media coverage of misinformation, may have unintended consequences for democracy. We propose that these interventions may increase scepticism towards all information, including accurate information. Across three online survey experiments in three diverse countries (the United States, Poland and Hong Kong; total n = 6,127), we tested the negative spillover effects of existing strategies and compared them with three alternative interventions against misinformation. We examined how exposure to fact-checking, media literacy tips and media coverage of misinformation affects individuals perception of both factual and false information, as well as their trust in key democratic institutions. Our results show that while all interventions successfully reduce belief in false information, they also negatively impact the credibility of factual information. This highlights the need for further improved strategies that minimize the harms and maximize the benefits of interventions against misinformation.

This article describes the perceptions and experiences of collaboration between teachers of physical education (n = 3) and special educators (n = 3) on teaching pupils with disabilities. Using a qualitative approach, the study seeks to establish the nature and extent of collaboration among these teachers and to identify the benefits and barriers to implementation. Semistructured interviews were used as the main data source. Data were collected from teachers working in the public school system in the southern part of Finland. The findings indicate that while teachers are mostly aware of the value of collaboration, its implementation varies immensely among the different schools. While the special educators in this study see themselves mainly responsible for supporting pupils with disabilities, the physical education teachers showed a strong commitment to the subject matter of their teaching. Participants also reported several challenges relating to time constraints, a lack of classroom support, and a shared vision of inclusive teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite technological advances in accounting systems and audit techniques, sampling remains a commonly used audit tool. For critical estimation applications involving low error rate populations, stratified mean-per-unit sampling (SMPU) has the unique advantage of producing trustworthy confidence intervals. However, SMPU is less efficient than other classical sampling techniques because it requires a larger sample size to achieve comparable precision. To address this weakness, we investigated how SMPU efficiency can be improved via three key design choices: (a) stratum boundary selection method, (b) number of sampling strata, and (c) minimum stratum sample size. Our tests disclosed that SMPU efficiency varies significantly with stratum boundary selection method. An iterative search-based method yielded the best efficiency, followed by the Dalenius–Hodges and Equal-Value-Per-Stratum methods. We also found that variations in Dalenius–Hodges implementation procedures yielded meaningful differences in efficiency. Regardless of boundary selection method, increasing the number of sampling strata beyond levels recommended in the professional literature yielded significant improvements in SMPU efficiency. Although a minor factor, smaller values of minimum stratum sample size were found to yield better SMPU efficiency. Based on these findings, suggestions for improving SMPU efficiency are provided. We also present the first known equations for planning the number of sampling strata given various application-specific parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Using the assessment literacy framework, the purpose of this study was to explore preservice teachers understanding and enactment of the message system during an early field experience. Method: Six PTs employed SE seasons totaling 540 min. Seven qualitative data methods were utilized. Data analysis included deductive and inductive analysis using a thematic approach. Trustworthiness included data triangulation, peer debriefing, negative case analysis, and the maintenance of an audit trail. Results: Three main themes derived from the data included: instructional decisions were driven by the SE model and informal assessment; formal assessment was driven by the structure of SE; and high assessment value but low assessment literacy. Discussion/Conclusion: The SE model drove PTs to use formal assessment, but primarily in an evaluative manner. The PTs lacked assessment literacy, felt pressure to follow the model, did not use assessment to inform teaching, and had concerns for future assessment use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With rising tensions between the United States on one side, and China and Russia on the other, the three countries have grown mutually accusatory about some testing activities they conduct to maintain and modernize their nuclear arsenals, with allegations made by the United States focusing on very low-yield fission experiments. In a world where trust in the nonproliferation regime is weakening and most bilateral arms control measures have been suspended, many experts fear that recriminations over very low-yield tests could spark a new escalation spiral to full-scale nuclear tests. Transparency measures could diffuse the suspicions around these tests and strengthen the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which is largely being complied with but still not legally in force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Contemporary Accounting Research is the property of Canadian Academic Accounting Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Sales managers need to maintain the trust of their salespeople to have productive working relationships. A positive and trusting working relationship can be threatened by a transgression on the part of the sales manager. An important challenge for sales managers concerns dealing with the aftermath of an error that damages the trust of a salesperson, especially when the error results in financial harm to that salesperson (e.g., unfair bonus/incentive allocation). A common restorative approach consists of the sales manager acknowledging the error and providing a financial compensation to the salesperson. Our study finds that instead of acknowledging the error, the sales manager should promise to make things right before providing financial compensation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Horizontal referrals--when suppliers recommend other suppliers--are a common phenomenon in complex B2B markets. For the referring supplier, giving the best possible horizontal referral may strengthen the relationship with its customer, yet it may also threaten the referring supplier's future revenues and cross-selling opportunities. Instead, the supplier could make an obligatory referral, one that fulfills the obligations of recommending another supplier while keeping the referring supplier's own interests paramount. The authors rely on role theory and its antecedents (mutual trust and referring supplier's dependence) to determine when a referring supplier adopts the role of a friend (vs. a businessperson) and gives the best possible referral (vs. an obligatory referral). Study 1, an experiment, supports the theoretical model. Study 2, a conjoint study, links the observable antecedents of the referring supplier-customer relationship to the choice of horizontal referrals. Study 3, another experiment, looks at the consequences of the horizontal referral on the referring supplier-customer relationship and shows that providing an obligatory referral can hurt the customer's intent to continue the relationship with the supplier. This effect is mediated by the customer's perceived alignment of interest with the supplier. For B2B marketing research and practice, the authors report that the supplier's dependence is critical in predicting the quality of horizontal referrals, even though an exploratory survey showed that customers overlook that dimension and focus on mutual trust when seeking referrals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]