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This article contributes to a better theoretical and empiric understanding of mixed results in the literature investigating the relationship between institutional confidence and adherence to recommended measures during a pandemic.

The article relies on structural equation models (SEMs) based on data from ResPOnsE COVID-19, a rolling cross-section (RCS) survey carried out in Italy from April to June 2020.

The authors’ findings show the existence of multiple pathways of confidence at the national and local level. Confidence in the institutions is positively associated with support for the performance of the Prime Minister and that of the regional institutions in the North West, which in turn, raises the likelihood of following the restrictive measures. However, in the same regions, a good appraisal of the regional system's performance also had a direct positive effect on the perception of being safe from the virus, decreasing adherence to the restrictive measures. Finally, the direct effect of confidence in the institutions on compliance is negative.

The result enlightens the crucial role both of national and local institutions in promoting or inhibiting adherence to restrictive measures during a pandemic and suggests that “one size fits all” measures for increasing overall institutional confidence might not be sufficient to reach the desired goal of achieving compliance in pandemic times.

The authors theorize and test three cognitive mechanisms – (1) the “cascade of confidence”; (2) the “paradox of support” and (3) the “paradox of confidence” – to account for both the positive and negative links between measures of political support and public acceptability of COVID-19 containment measures.

The purpose of this paper is to examine an important yet underexplored research question in the literature: What determines the length of contract governing buyer–supplier relationships during market transitions? The length of contract is a solid indicator of the comprehensiveness of a contract. By integrating transaction costs economics, the embeddedness perspective and the institution-based view, the paper develops a model that incorporates specific investments and perceived opportunism, strategies to select suppliers and buyer firms’ confidence in the institutional environment. It further posits how buyer firms’ dependence on suppliers moderates these relationships.

Data were collected nationwide via face-to-face interviews with 328 executives in 164 Chinese firms who shared information pertaining to 774 buyer–supplier contracts. A fine-grained mixed-empirical method was designed to test the proposed hypotheses, to confirm the reliability and to generalize the research findings.

All the proposed factors significantly influence the length of the contract. Results obtained through a moderated mediating model suggest that buyers with supplier-specific investments and that choose market-based selection relative to a relationship-based tend to perceive more opportunism in buyer–supplier relationships, which will lead to shortening the length of the contract. However, the buyer’s perception of opportunism will decrease when buyers perceive higher levels of confidence in their legal institutions.

The study discusses several practical implications for B2B managers who typically involve in interfirm exchanges as well as for emerging economies’ institutions.

Leveraging theoretical insights from transaction cost economics, the institution-based view and buyer–supplier relationships literature, this empirical study adds unique contributions to B2B research in general and emerging economies’ institutional literature in particular.

This paper evaluates the influence of the institutional context on the dynamics of institutional change and the possibilities for human agency in this process.

A comparison of the emergence of the temporary work agency industry in five countries is used to illustrate the influence of three elements of the institutional context: high/low pressure field emergence, societal confidence, and power and discretion of the emerging industry.

The analysis reveals how these three elements affect the dynamics of new field development. It shows the interaction between institutionalising and de‐institutionalising pressures and the dialectical nature of the process when comparing the developments over time between different national (institutional) contexts.

Propositions for further research are formulated. Combining the effects of the three situational variables three models of industry institutionalization are established: autonomous development, constrained development and societalisation.

The findings illustrate the situated condition of human and organizational agency in processes of institutional entrepreneurship. Our analysis also shows how early externally constraining effects slow down early institutionalisation of a new organizational field, but at the same time trigger processes of institutional structuration that strengthen the institutionalising role of the industry in the long run.

The comparative analysis helps to see how the dynamics of institutional renewal are affected by institutional context and highlights the situated nature of effective human agency.

Why do strangers in collectivist societies act prosocially? Previous work indicates that generalized trust (trust in strangers) is necessary for prosocial behavior; however, generalized trust exists at low levels in collectivist societies. Researchers have also argued that without trust among strangers, social order is threatened. Yet, collectivist societies are not characterized by social disorder; therefore, individuals must be acting prosocially. Without generalized trust, how is this possible? In this work I argue that institutional trust (a belief that institutions induce others to act in a trustworthy manner) is responsible for prosociality in collectivist societies, not generalized trust. Does a similar relationship hold in individualist societies? Although some evidence suggests that prosocial behavior is predicated by generalized trust, other evidence indicates that the stronger predictor is institutional trust. All arguments are tested with data from the World Values Survey (WVS) with data from 14 countries. Results from regression analyses are reported. The chapter concludes with implications and directions for future work.

The third in a series of articles that explore the nature of academic regulation in the UK. Argues that UK higher education (HE) should aspire to a regulatory regime which is based on the principle of ‘partnership in trust’. The principle would facilitate a strategic move towards institutional self‐regulation for those institutions that demonstrate effective and consistent capacity for effective regulation. Recognises that public confidence in such a model would require a complementary emphasis on collective regulation at the level of the institution and subject. Explores the idea of partnership in a climate of trust through a hypothetical model of a self‐regulating university and considers the potential for new types of relationship that could be created by applying the principle.

The purpose of this paper is to propose and test a conceptual model that explains racially/ethnically differential confidence in order institutions through a mediating mechanism of perception of discrimination.

This study relies on a nationally representative sample of 1,001 respondents and path analysis to test the relationships between race/ethnicity, multiple mediating factors, and confidence in order institutions.

Both African and Latino Americans reported significantly lower levels of confidence compared to White Americans. People who have stronger senses of being discriminated against, regardless of their races, have reduced confidence. A range of other cognitive/evaluative variables have promoted or inhibited people’s confidence in order institutions.

This study relies on cross-sectional data which preclude definite inferences regarding causal relationships among the variables. Some measures are limited due to constraint of data.

To lessen discrimination, both actual and perceived, officials from order institutions should act fairly and impartially, recognize citizen rights, and treat people with respect and dignity. In addition, comprehensive measures involving interventions throughout the entire criminal justice system to reduce racial inequalities should be in place.

Equal protection and application of the law by order institutions are imperative, so are social policies that aim to close the structural gaps among all races and ethnicities.

This paper takes an innovative effort of incorporating the currently dominant group position perspective and the injustice perspective into an integrated account of the process by which race and ethnicity affect the perception of discrimination, which, in turn, links to confidence in order institutions.

The dissemination of misleading and false information through media can jeopardize a company’s reputation, thus posing a threat to its stock and performance. Institutional investors are known to influence capital markets. Therefore, this paper investigates whether institutional investors engage in shaping the media sentiment stock nexus, stabilize company stocks and enhance performance.

We first investigate the effect of media sentiment on market reactions by using panel regression models. To examine the role of institutional investors, we design a quasi-experiment by exploiting the Financial Crisis of 2008 and go further by examining the heterogeneity across levels of institutional ownership. Due to risk-averse, investors may respond asymmetrically to pessimistic and positive sentiment. Accordingly, we split the sample into two sub-types, good news and bad news, based on keywords representing positive or negative content.

We find supportive evidence that institutional investors have impacts on how the markets react to media news, and the impacts are heterogeneous in the face of bad and good news. We conjecture that institutional investors act as a stabilizer of stock prices through media sentiment management.

This paper confirms the distinctive effects of institutional investors on capital markets, and uncovers the behind-the-scenes intervention and possible causal link running from institutional investors to media sentiment management. It contributes to the broad field of institutional investors' behavior, media news involvement in capital markets and market efficiency.

Municipalities commonly ask the public to give input by answering questions about their preferences. There is some belief that input enhances the public's confidence in government. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether different types of input activities (obtained by phone or online surveys, or via face‐to‐face engagements) differentially impact confidence.

Data were collected over two years from different input activities undertaken to inform a city's budgeting and performance measures' determinations.

Significant amounts of variance in the public's confidence in municipal governments are accounted for by independent predictors such as current satisfaction, perceived trustworthiness, legitimacy, and loyalty to the institution. Compared to online and phone surveys, face‐to‐face input methods seem to have a particularly strong, positive relationship with the public's perceptions of the trustworthiness (e.g. competence, integrity, benevolence) of municipal government officials. Persons who participate in face‐to‐face, online, or phone events differ both in extent of confidence and, to a small extent, in the bases of their confidence.

The study design is correlational rather than experimental and data were not originally gathered to test the identified hypotheses. In addition, it is not prudent to put too much stock in results from only one jurisdiction that relied primarily on convenience samples.

In instances in which enhancing confidence in the institution is a specific objective of public input, this work provides researchers and practitioners with guidance to better anticipate which input technique(s) works best and why.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of social capital on happiness. The previous literature generally measures social capital using “generalized trust”, which is a narrow dimension of social capital. In this study, social capital is measured as a multidimensional concept consisting of generalized trust, institutional trust and trust on family, neighborhood and strangers.

This study explores the relationship between social capital and average happiness using a panel data of 89 countries from 1980 to 2017. The empirical analysis is done by employing pooled OLS (POLS), fixed effects method (FEM), random effects method (REM) and system generalized method of moments.

The findings demonstrate that all measures of social capital are positively associated with happiness while comparatively institutional trust and generalized trust appear more significant for happiness. The findings are robust to different robustness checks. The findings document the importance of social capital for average happiness.

The research has certain limitations. First, the objective of study was to cover global sample of countries, however, the data series were not available for all countries. Second, the empirical is restricted to global evidence instead of exploring separate estimates for developed and developing world.

The findings document the importance of social capital for average happiness. The awareness of the importance of social capital needs to be increased. Government can develop such organizations or institutions that are conducive for social capital development.

Social scientists have increasingly turned to constructivist models to explain when, and how, international and world-level social forces constrain the policy-making autonomy of national states. While constructivists have shown that international ideational processes matter for domestic policy making, they have had a harder time explaining why some ideas gain prominence in policy discussions while others do not. This chapter develops an institutionally centered materialist model of idea selection, arguing that international relations of dependency give actors who control vital financial resources a greater capacity to shape the ideational agenda. This model is explored through a case study of the international sources of American monetary policy in the early 1960s. A detailed examination of archival materials shows that European officials at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development were able to advance their own ideas for American monetary policy because the United States was dependent on European cooperation to help resolve its mounting balance of payments problems.