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Given the fierce competition in financial services, service failure management and trust restoration tactics are becoming strategic priorities. Studies investigating trust restoration have increased over the years due to the significance of trust in services and the frequency of trust violations. Drawing on the sense-making and defensive approaches of attribution theory, this study aims to explore the effectiveness of various trust recovery tactics (e.g. apology, explanation, and investigation) in financial services considering the prevalence of service failure severity.

Based on a scenario-based survey, this study gathered data from 402 consumers of different banks in Pakistan. The study analyzed the data using ordinary least square regressions and structural equation modeling.

The study indicated that explanation is more effective in repairing character-competence and commitment-based trust, while investigation remained highly effective for inducing congruence-based trust. Interestingly, an apology was more effective for communication-based trust repairing, while context-based trust recovery was unaffected against all recovery tactics. Despite the prevalence of severe service failure, recovery actions proved fully effective for character-competence and commitment-based trust while partially effective for congruence-based trust recovery. This study also found that severe service failure undermines the effectiveness of recovery actions in repairing communication and context-based trust.

The study extends the literature on trust recovery by integrating sense-making and defensive attribution theory. The sense-making approach contributes to the existing knowledge on trust recovery by elucidating how consumers and service providers develop a shared understanding to facilitate the recovery mechanism of multidimensional trust in financial services.

Building on prior trust repair research, this study aims to develop a more robust theoretical framework that describes trust repair strategies used by salespeople following a breach of trust.

To achieve the aim of this paper, individual depth interviews with 18 professional salespeople, 4 sales executives and 7 purchasing agents were undertaken.

This paper examines the value of using trust repair strategies (e.g. restoration, regulation and verbal repair strategies) both in isolation and in conjunction. The results suggest that individual trust repair strategies operate through impacting different dimensions of justice, as justice provides a reliable indicator as to whether the salesperson can be trusted in the future. This paper also finds that combining multiple trust repair strategies can have an additive effect on trust.

This paper uses thematic analysis to inductively identify the effective trust repair strategies that are used by salespeople in actual exchange relationships while integrating these insights with the existing theoretical frameworks in the literature. It contributes to theory through creating a conceptual model explaining the breach of trust and trust repair process, introducing justice as a direct mediating mechanism between trust repair strategies and increased trust. The research also develops a new perspective on combining salesperson words and actions to repair trust. It also provides a managerial contribution through introducing an optimized approach to trust repair in buyer-seller relationships.

This study seeks to examine perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR) with a focus on ethical and legal questions, related to the constructs such as recovery satisfaction, customer trust, and loyalty after a service failure.

An empirical test was conducted on this relationship in the context of service failure and recovery. A structural equation model was employed to test the hypotheses.

Results indicate that perceived CSR has a significant impact on customer trust and loyalty and that customer trust serves as a key mediating variable in service recovery.

This study provides a theoretical implication for the relationship between perceived CSR and the relationship constructs such as service recovery satisfaction, customer trust, and loyalty.

The results suggest that managers may need to be aware of perceived CSR as a key variable in restoring customer loyalty. The results further suggest that perceived CSR has a direct and indirect positive effect on loyalty; perceived CSR has a direct impact on loyalty, but it also has an indirect influence on loyalty through customer trust.

In an attempt to deepen the understanding of how customer perceptions of firm CSR are connected with other customer-related outcomes during service recovery, the present research proposes a comprehensive model which encompasses CSR and other key relationship constructs after a service failure and recovery.

Building on crisis management studies, this study aims to advance research on brand recovery from the existing focus on product brand/customer dyad into stakeholder marketing and corporate branding.

This study uses a single case of industry-dominant corporate brand in an enriched context through in-depth analysis of industry informant and secondary data.

The paper uncovers detail of corporate brand and stakeholder interactions directed towards recovering corporate brand and restoring trust in the industry.

This study offers an evidence-based framework of stakeholder interactions designed to support corporate brand recovery (CBR). The rich data are bounded within a single case.

Framework illustrates the importance of drawing on stakeholders in CBR, particularly in an industry crisis, emphasises trust restoration and reveals the peripheral role of customers in CBR.

This study points to significance of stakeholder networks, particularly in insurance and financial services, in addressing social and ethical issues related to corporate misdeeds is identified.

This study makes noteworthy contribution to brand recovery research in two ways: firstly, by investigating the recovery of brands at corporate level and, secondly, by detailing the interactions between corporate brand and industry stakeholders in recovering the brand within a stricken industry.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the trust‐related aspect of the work of school principals. The authors' exploratory examination of the Canadian school principals' perceptions of their moral agency and trust‐brokering roles described their establishing, maintaining, and recovering of trust in schools. This article is delimited to the selected perceptions of Canadian principals' regarding the fragile nature of trust in their school settings.

This study used the open‐ended responses from surveys sent to school principals (n=177), who responded to the authors' invitation to complete a survey, as part of a larger study, in the ten provinces and three territories of Canada. The data analyses included theme and cross‐theme analyses.

This study has pointed to the perception that trust‐related matters are an important, yet a fragile, aspect of the work of principals. Principals often have to deal with trust‐related matters, which have caused trustworthiness to be threatened and trusting relationships to be broken. Trust‐related problems contribute to the fragility of trust and frequently seem to pertain to relationships between principal and other administrators, staff members, parents, and students. Most of the time, principals as leaders felt personal responsibility to make sure relationships among all stakeholders were sustained and, if broken, restored. The prevalent belief among participants in the study was that trusting relationships, though fragile and often broken, are subject to the hope of restoration and renewal.

This study provided valuable findings that enhance the understanding of ethical decision making and trust brokering amongst the Canadian school principals. While the discussions of trust and moral agency are certainly present in the educational literature, not much is known about the self‐perceived role of a principal as both a moral agent and trust broker. Moreover, there is perceived need for qualitative studies in the area of trust in educational leadership.

The aim of this paper is to study the critical role of trust in electronic commerce extensively in the context of establishing initial trust between trading partners. Ongoing trust between partners can quickly be eroded through security or other trust violations. This paper examines whether customers are willing to transact with an eCommerce vendor in light of security and trust violations.

The paper draws upon research in professional trust relationships and adapts it to the e-commerce context to create a process view of trust violation and repair. Using a design science framework, this paper employs agent-based modeling as the simulation technique to study the implications of security and trust violations on the willingness of customers to continue transacting with the vendor. The simulations are conducted for a variety of trust violations and reconciliation actions.

While some of the results are predictable, the key finding for managers is that moderate reconciliation tactics are effective for all cases but the most severe trust violations, where trust is irrevocably broken. This has clear financial implications, particularly in cases where vendors may operate with small margins in competitive markets.

Given the increasing push toward mobile and Internet-based commerce, and the large range of possible trust violations and security incidents in online purchases, coupled with increasing competition among vendors, it becomes imperative for vendors to provide effective tactics to repair customer trust violations when they arise.

Practical conservation of heritage buildings in Kolkata started in the 1990s and the first restoration project was the Town Hall, a public building built by the British in 1813, in the central business district by a public‐private partnership. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the restoration process and adaptive reuse of the Town Hall as a case study.

A team of conservationists, architects and structural engineers worked during 1996‐1998. The methodology included surveying and documenting the existing structure; examining old materials and methods of construction, earlier repairs and the suitability of matching new materials; analysing the structure, defects and their causes; prescribing remedial measures; preparing items of work, estimating and tendering for appointment of contractors; allocating funds for restoration; supervision and monitoring of the works.

It was necessary to undertake structural strengthening and physical restoration through corrective measures, and reinstallation of all service systems, which resulted in the opening up of this edifice again for various kinds of public use, that included a museum.

This was a pilot project for the state administration and the people of Kolkata. After this project, the conservation of historic buildings became an agenda of government and civil society. The lessons learned here were applied to the restoration of other similar buildings in Kolkata.

Conservation‐researchers, academics and practitioners will gain from this paper an in‐depth understanding of the restoration process in Kolkata.

This paper aims to explore the problematic of public policies and leadership challenges for socio-economic transformation in South Africa. The paper illustrates that policies and laws of socio-economic reform have been introduced in democratic South Africa. However, socio-economic transformation remains a challenge. Lack of trust in the leadership relationships amongst political and economic agents is pointed as a contributing factor. Hence, LE emerges as a leadership strategy to help mitigate the problem.

The paper starts by presenting the current economic situation of South Africa touching on some important economic indicators to illustrate the consequences of poor leadership in public policy implementation process. The paper then analyses the leadership challenges to drive socio-economic reforms that have been introduced in South Africa since the end of apartheid with focus on the current National Development Plan. Lack of trust in leadership is identified as a problematic factor and leadership ethos (LE) emerges as a leadership strategy to enable the building of trust in leadership for the purpose of a successful implementation of public policies.

Lack of trust in leadership is identified as a problematic factor contributing in the absence of cooperation and collaboration in the leadership relationship amongst public servants (from up to bottom) and citizens for the purpose of successful implementation of public policies. Hence, there is need for a new leadership paradigm that would enable the building of trust in these leadership relationships. LE emerges as such a leadership strategy.

The paper calls for an exploration into the understanding and practice of LE and its inherent critical success factors (CSFs) considered as a leadership strategy that can help drive particularly public policies implementation process. LE intends to promote moral leadership that helps public servants to build good character and thus the will to do the right thing, and mutually trusting relationship is a CSF of LE. Therefore LE enables build the much needed trust in leadership relationships for a successful organisational leadership and management.

This paper provides significant implications by identifying lack of trust as a problematic factor in the leadership relationships amongst political and economic agents in South Africa, contributing thus in the poor implementation of public policies. LE emerges as a leadership strategy that would help mitigate the problem by enabling the building, the maintenance and restoration of trust in organisational and or institutional management for a successful public policy implementation process.

The purpose of this paper is to show how overall performance can help foster trust in financial institutions. While a climate of mistrust amongst investors and the general public toward financial institutions has developed since the recent turmoil in the financial markets, it is believed that mutual funds adopting the overall performance approach can help recover a climate of trust owing to the implied balance between economic, social and environmental performance. More specifically, overall performance promotes values that are similar to investors’ values and could be used by responsible investment funds if they want to contribute to the restoration of trust in investment funds.

This paper uses an innovative, experimental design to test the effect of value similarity on the trust that investors have in the investment fund. This effect cannot be studied in isolation, which is why it is compared with the effects of financial performance and ethical labeling on trust.

The authors find that funds with similar values are perceived as more trustworthy by investors. Consequently, overall performance should be added to fund managers' toolbox if they want to foster trust in their fund. The effect of financial performance on trust applies only when the investor has no other information regarding the fund. As for the ethical labeling of funds, it has no effect on trust.

The findings encourage research that aims to develop a comprehensive approach of integrated overall performance focusing on financial and extra-financial values. Bonnet et al.’s (2016) fieldwork on socio-economic management and Naro and Travaillé^©’s (2016) work on management controllers provide promising examples in this regard.

Investment funds can acquire an edge by communicating on overall performance and specific values of their target investors. Merely labeling funds as ethical is not sufficient to increase trust.

Increasing similarity in values to investors and adopting the overall performance approach in investment funds will increase investors' trust. Trust contributes to social capital and allows societies to create flexible large-scale businesses needed to be competitive in a global environment.

Using an innovative experimental methodology, this paper shows that the underlying factor of overall performance on trust in investment funds is value similarity. It provides researchers and practitioners with insight about the underlying mechanisms of the effect of overall performance on trust.

This study aims to explore the combined strategies leading to successful repair of two types of trust in Chinese construction projects and provide an effective guidance and control trust repair in construction projects. During the research period, the author interviewed 150 managers from 50 Chinese construction projects and collected details of 125 violations. The research examines the effect of combined strategy of trust repair in Chinese management scenario.

This study adopted a mixed, quantitative, qualitative and exploratory approach. The author first extracted six strategies, namely, apology, denial, penance, communication, promise and compensation, from the literature review and generalization. Then, the author conducted an interview with 150 managers from 50 China construction projects. And the author analyzed the data through qualitative comparative analysis (QCA).

When competence-based trust is broken, violators should adopt communication and promise, demonstrate their competence and qualification, and change the attributions of competence from the trustor. When integrity-based trust is broken, violators should apologize, actively admit the mistake, show a positive attitude and seek the forgiveness from the trustor. After reconstructing trustors' perceptions of competence or integrity, violators should also make a promise to trustors for the future. The result of this research not only illustrates the sufficiency and necessity of a single strategy for trust repair but also explores the combination of trust repair strategies that rebuild the trust.

This study is limited to 50 construction projects in the Chinese construction context, so conclusions are limited in application. Data used in this research did not provide an in-depth analysis of trust repair failures. Thus, additional research is needed to explore why trust was not repaired. The study is also limited to examining the Chinese construction project organizations only, and future studies should incorporate organizations in other nations and regions.

Compared with using a single strategy, a combined strategy provides a contribution to the future practice of repair broken relationship between construction project organizations. This research helps to organize decisions and benefits managers, from Chinese owners and contractors, in choosing which of these strategies repair trust. The author also provides a specific combination of strategies to repair relationships for international companies that have conflicts with Chinese construction companies.

This research is among the early studies in China that preliminary examines the combined strategy of trust repair between Chinese owners and contractors by using causal attribution theory and QCA. This study makes a valuable contribution toward combined strategy in construction project and the knowledge system of trust repair. Future studies could build on the findings from the current study to develop a cross-cultural research on trust repair.