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The purpose of this paper is to empirically assess the combined impact of the ethical environment, organizational trust and workplace optimism on individual performance.

A structural model is theorized and data from 250 individuals working for private organizations were analyzed using partial-least-squares structural equation modeling.

Both the ethical environment and organizational trust positively impact workplace optimism. Of the ethical environment, organizational trust and workplace optimism, only workplace optimism directly impacts individual performance. The impact of the ethical environment and organizational trust on individual performance is indirect through workplace optimism.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study to assess the combined impact of the ethical environment, organizational trust and workplace optimism on individual performance. It is important to conduct similar studies to verify these findings.

An ethical environment and organizational trust foster high levels of workplace optimism that in turn lead to improved employee performance.

The important role that workplace optimism plays within the ethical climate of organizations is theorized and assessed. This is the first empirical assessment of the mediational role of workplace optimism on the established relationships between ethical environment and individual performance, and organizational trust and individual performance.

This paper aims to mainly investigate the role of trust, which is an important informal system, in executive compensation incentives.

Using the data of Chinese A-share private enterprises from 2003 to 2014, the paper estimates the effect that trust has on executive compensation incentives.

Results indicate that trust can significantly enhance the effectiveness of executive compensation incentives. Furthermore, the better the regional trust environment in which companies are located, the more pronounced the effect is. In particular, the effect of trust on executive compensation incentives is only significant when the formal legal system is immature. As companies continue to grow and develop and the formal system becomes perfect, the role of trust weakens. The formal system, including the corporate governance mechanism and perfect legislation, then becomes the key to promoting executive compensation incentives.

This paper provides evidence of the significance of both informal and formal systems. It not only emphasises the important role that the informal system has played in “the mystery of China’s economic growth” but also supports the “ruling the country by law” strategy for the sustainable development of China’s economy.

This paper reveals the relationship between the formal and informal systems, which provides a new perspective on and empirical evidence for the determinants of executive compensation incentives, and it also finds an explanation for the rapid growth of China’s economic development.

This paper aims to analyze the influence of authentic leadership on knowledge sharing and employee’s creativity through the mediating role of team environment of psychological safety and trust.

The participants in this study were 60 team leaders and 300 team members’ working in different Overseas Employment Promoters Agencies (OEPA) at Islamabad region, Pakistan. In addition to the authentic leadership of their supervisors, employees reported their perception of being psychologically safe and in the environment of team trust at work, whereas supervisors rated employee’s creativity at work areas. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was carried out using structural equation modelling (SEM) for validation of results among the variables.

The major findings of the study were (a) authentic leadership positively predicted knowledge sharing and employees’ creativity through the mediator’s role of team environment (psychological safety and team environment of trust), and (b) team environment of psychological safety and team environment of trust affected both the knowledge sharing and employee’s creativity.

Authentic leadership has to be synergized with environment of psychological safety and team environment of trust, to enhance employees’ creativity. The results of the study delineated practical applications for both the researchers and policymakers. The results of this study would also augment the body of knowledge on human resource practices in both developed and developing countries.

This is one of the first studies to empirically examine the influence of authentic leadership on knowledge sharing and employee’s creativity through the mediator role of team environment of psychological safety and trust in OEPA in Pakistan.

Conceptualizing trust alone or as the starting point for understanding both trust and distrust is insufficient. Therefore, this chapter focuses on the construction of phenotypic trustscapes and distrustscapes that permit an abstract exploration of the concepts of trust and distrust using societal and dyadic relationships and perceptions of the individual as the units of analysis. For theoretical understanding of trust and distrust, it uses social and evolutionary biologic multi-level theory. This chapter builds on the existing trust literature in three ways: (1) by triangulating on trust and distrust through the use of a number of research methodologies; (2) by placing trust and distrust in value orientation theory and models; and (3) by extricating trust and distrust from reciprocity constructs, and placing them into separate phenotypes: trustscapes and distrustscapes. These efforts show that both trust and distrust are naturally occurring phenomena, with one or the other predominant in specific contexts. The chapter includes scenarios in Japan, Bulgaria, and Indonesia to demonstrate how micro- and macro-level examples of trustscapes and distrustscapes function.

The potential for e-commerce is limited by a trust deficit when traders do not interact in a physical, bricks-and-mortar context. The theory of information richness posits that equivocal interactions, such as ones requiring trust, can be facilitated through communication media that transmit multiple cues interactively. This study aims to examine the potential of information-rich virtual worlds to reduce this trust deficit compared with more traditional Web-based e-tailing environments.

Rather than focusing on stated intentions, the authors adopt an experimental approach to measure behaviour. Participants receive performance-related financial incentives to perform trust games in different information-rich treatments that represent three retail environments: a physical environment representing bricks-and-mortar trade, an electronic environment representing Web-based online retailing and a virtual environment representing virtual world retail.

The authors find that the two dimensions of trust significantly differ between the treatments. In particular, as hypothesised, both trustingness and trustworthiness are higher in the virtual than in the electronic environment. However, contrary to the hypotheses, physical trade is not associated with greater trust than virtual trade.

The authors extend previous research by demonstrating how the information richness of the virtual world interface can promote e-commerce by deepening trust between trading partners. This research also complements existing work that approaches product and service interfaces through the lens of servicescapes.

The findings also contribute towards the development of services marketing practice and the design of e-commerce environments.

Much of the work in this space considers purchase intentions and attitudes around trust, whereas this study looks at actual trust behaviour in the virtual space.

The proliferation of the internet as the means for knowledge and information exchange gives rise to new issues of sustaining trust within web‐mediated information environments. However, researchers have not studied trust on websites that evoke emotionally charged topics that are culturally and ethically oriented as much as they have studied e‐tailing trust. Hence, this paper aims to explore the notion of trust within the web‐based information for Islamic content environment and how consumers' trust evaluations on topics that are sensitive to their cultural norms would give different a connotation of trust and its guidelines.

The paper discusses the notion of trust, its dimensions, conceptualisation and operationalisation in the online environment. The paper presents the results of a descriptive study conducted via an online survey distributed to online Muslim users through the mailing list of the Federation of Universities in the Islamic World (see www.fuiw.org) database.

The analysis highlights issues surrounding trust among 605 respondents from different continents. The outcome of the findings indicates the importance of third‐party seals and overall site presentation in mediating the interaction of trustworthy communication.

Due to the huge population of Muslims from different ethnic groups, the research is unable to capture a general order of the perceptions of trust. In addition, what are presented here are “possible issues” of trust that exist amongst Islamic communities and not something definitive.

Designers of information artefacts should consider the cultural aspect in which the information domain resides, because the culture within which a person operates will shape his or her perception of trust. Hence, creating the right appearance on the web by imposing online legitimacy, appropriate communication styles and appearance are integral issues for designers to consider in developing information systems for a sensitive information context.

The research should be of value to those who have an interest in exploring, enquiring and communicating knowledge or information pertaining to a Muslim user group within the wider human‐computer interaction scope.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the moderating role of employees’ self-experienced social responsibility perceptions in the relationship between employees’ community- and environment-oriented social responsibility perceptions and trust in an organization.

The corporate social responsibility (CSR) construct is examined in the context of stakeholders including the community, environment and employees. The study was carried out with 438 questionnaires gathered from four- and five-star hotels operating in Alanya, Turkey. The proposed model was tested with the partial least squares method of structural equation modeling. Multiple group analysis was performed to test the moderating effect.

Findings reveal that employees’ community- and environment-oriented social responsibility perceptions have a positive effect on trust in the organization. Based on the results of multigroup analysis, the effect of employees’ community-oriented social responsibility perceptions on trust in the organization was determined to be more prominent in the group of employees with high self-experienced social responsibility perceptions. However, the same moderating effect could not be determined in relation to environment-oriented social responsibility perceptions and trust in the organization.

Studies focusing on CSR activities were mainly examined at the macro level. Internal stakeholders’ returns to these activities were not sufficiently considered. Contrary to previous studies that examine the link between CSR perceptions measured with Carroll’s pyramid dimensions and organizational trust, the current study examined CSR perceptions with the stakeholder approach. Moreover, the study discovered one of the variables defined as the black box that differentiates the returns that employees provide to CSR activities.

The challenge of pervasive computing consists in offering access to computing services anywhere and anytime with any devices. However, before it becomes a reality, the problems of access control and authentication have to be solved, among others. Existing solutions are inadequate without adaptation to this specific environment. Among the promising approaches, the trust paradigm seems to be more flexible than others. We base this proposal on this paradigm to implement a distrust model, so‐called APC (Access Pass Certificate). The main objective of this model is to enable authorized user to roam and to access trusted sites though they are not known locally. A user can claim two kinds of APCs provided by two kinds of sites: the home site (where the user has an account) and the trusted site (that trusts the user). Using these certificates, the user can progressively extend her access scope. This model implements a decentralized mapping policy, where the correspondence between the user’s home profile and her rights in the trusted sites is determined by the trusted site. This distrust model and its implementation are presented in this article where we exhibit its importance for large but controlled access in pervasive environments.

As an important group of internal stakeholders, communication professionals carry the responsibilities to communicate with multiple groups of audience and foster trusted and satisfied relationships, both internally and externally. However, while busy with taking care of various stakeholders, the trust–satisfaction perception of communication professionals is underrated. Therefore, this paper aims to shift the investigation of the trust–satisfaction relationship from general employees to this unique group of communicators. By incorporating three key factors in an institutional environment (i.e. job engagement, leadership performance and organizational culture and support), the authors further investigate the moderated mediating effects of those factors on the trust–satisfaction relationship.

A national online survey of communication professionals working and living in the USA was designed to test the trust–satisfaction relationship. Surveyed communication professionals were asked to evaluate their own perceptions on various institutional factors. A conceptual moderated multiple-mediation structural model was proposed and tested to identify the impact of a complicated institutional environment on the perceived trust–satisfaction relationship.

Results confirmed a strong positive impact of trust in organization on communication professionals' perceived job satisfaction. Results also confirmed the mediating effects of job engagement and communication leaders' performance on such a trust–satisfaction relationship. The authors' moderated mediation analysis indicated the important role of organizational culture in this complicated institutional environment and its indirect impact on the trust–satisfaction relationship.

The research explored several important factors within a complicated institutional environment and their potential impact on trust–satisfaction relationship. More significantly, the authors focused on one unique group of internal stakeholders, communication professionals, by analyzing how these institutional factors affect their very own perceptions. Even though communication professionals carry the responsibilities of acting as the communication and strategy facilitators on behalf of their organization, their perceptions on trust and satisfaction are equally important and deserve more attention. Results of our research promote the understanding of the complicated mechanisms within corporate communication for an enhanced trust–satisfaction relationship between communication professionals and their organization.

Executives of network organizations seek to combine core competencies and talents of individual firms, along the various links of the value chain for a given project. These firms are brought together in alignment for the purpose of providing organizations a competitive advantage. Using multiple examples as well as results from an extensive research project, this chapter introduces a multidisciplinary model for leading network organizations. The model is informed by theoretical and empirical research and by executive practice. It includes consideration of an organization’s internal interactions as well as its interactions with the environment and with the external organizations within its network. The chapter provides leaders a set of four imperatives for achieving effective collaboration within networks.