This talk gives an overview of the variety of research methods that have been used to study trust. It considers the methodological implications of conceptual issues and various methodological challenges, including some specific thoughts on trust at different levels from interpersonal to international as well as the notion of 'willingness to be vulnerable' . Overall, a ‘horses-for-courses’ approach is advocated that gives highest priority to methodological fit in the sense of aligning theory and measurement and matching research objectives and methods.
Speakers: Guido Möllering, Associate Professor of Organization and Management and holds the EWE Chair of Economic Organization and Trust at Jacobs University Bremen, Germany. Mark N.K. Saunders, Professor in Business Research Methods at the Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham.
Guido Möllering is Associate Professor of Organization and Management and holds the EWE Chair of Economic Organization and Trust at Jacobs University Bremen, Germany. He earned his PhD in Management at the University of Cambridge, UK, and his habilitation (postdoctoral degree, venia legendi) in Business Administration at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. His main areas of research are inter-organizational relationships, organizational fields, and trust. Professor Möllering published several books, notably “Trust: Reason, Routine, Reflexivity” (2006), and articles in leading journals such as “Organization Science” and “Journal of International Business Studies”. He is a Senior Editor of “Organization Studies” and a Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the “Journal of Trust Research”.
Mark N.K. Saunders is Professor in Business Research Methods at the Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham. He holds Visiting Professorships at the Universities of Malta, Surrey and Worcester. His research interests include human resource aspects of the management of change including trust and organizational learning, and research methods. He has published in a range of journals including Human Relations, Human Performance, Journal of Personnel Psychology, Journal of Small Business Management, Journal of Trust Research, Management Learning and Social Science and Medicine. He is a member of the editorial board of Personnel Review. Mark is book series editor of the Handbooks of Research Methods (Edward Elgar Publishing) and co-series book editor of Understanding Research Methods for Business and Management Students (Sage). He is co-editor of Organizational Trust: a Cultural Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2010), Handbook of Research Methods on Trust (2nd edition, Edward Elgar, 2015) and lead author of Research Methods for Business Students (7th edition, FT Prentice Hall, 2016), which has also been translated into Chinese, Dutch, Greek, Russian and Vietnamese.
Recommended Reading:
Lyon, F., Möllering, G., Saunders, M.N.K. (2015). Introduction. Researching Trust: The Ongoing Challenge of Matching Objectives and Methods. In: Lyon, F., Möllering, G., Saunders, M.N.K. (Eds.) Handbook of Research Methods on Trust, Second Edition. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp 1-22. http://www.elgaronline.com/view/9781782547402.xml (direct link to the PDF: http://www.elgaronline.com/downloadpdf/9781782547402.00009.xml)
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