Call for Papers

In our turbulent times, global and local crises have made the issue of trust in and between organizations ever more salient among a wide range of stakeholder groups. As crises occur at different levels and imply heightened vulnerabilities, knowledge on how to respond to them in a way that uses and at the same time maintains trust is societally relevant. Very recently, and over the past decades generally, crises and their management have been highly prominent in public discourses.
 
A crisis is a low-probability, high-impact event that threatens the viability of a person, group, organization, society or nation, and it is also characterized by ambiguity of cause and effect, the means of resolution, as well as by a belief that decisions must be made swiftly (Pearson & Clair, 1998). A crisis may overwhelm local response capacity, necessitating a request for joint response efforts across various sectors and levels of the community. Modern-day crisis management may require intensive collaboration, integration, and synchronization of a broad range of organizations, agencies, and government institutions at several levels (Steen & Morsut, 2020) where the actors involved find themselves in the “crossroads” scenario that is the theme of the 40^th EGOS Colloquium.
 
Crisis management is the systematic attempt to avert crises or to effectively manage those that do occur (Pearson & Clair, 1998). The potential interconnectedness and complexity of crises necessitate inter-disciplinary collaboration. However, cross-sectoral, interdisciplinary cooperation is difficult (e.g., Ansell & Boin 2019; Corbacioglu & Kapucu, 2006). Many organizations aspire to gain collaborative advantage by working in partnerships across organizational, sectoral, and even national boundaries. Such collaborations, however, are difficult to manage, and the likelihood of disappointing outputs is high. To create advantage, practitioners need to engage in a continuous process of nurturing the collaborative processes. One core issue in the nurturing process is trust (e.g., Kapucu et al., 2010; Roud & Gausdal 2019).
 
Kapucu (2006) shows that relationships developed before a crisis response (i.e., through frequent interaction in networks or collaborative exercises) serve to develop trust relations across inter-organizational boundaries. The advantage of regular interactions between the organizations is that it allows them to collaborate more effectively (Provan & Kenis, 2008). Further, Owen and Currie (2022) show how investment in inter-organizational relationships both during and after the crisis contributes to effective trust repair across networks. Accordingly, scholars have argued that that a well-functioning inter-organizational collaboration during crisis is based on an ongoing basic level of trust level among the organizations involved (Curnin et al., 2015).
 
At the same time, however, some have determined that effective collaboration among organizations also depends on trust in individual performance within the organizations (McGuire, 2006). If trust is missing in inter-organizational relationships this can seriously jeopardise organizations’ performance and innovativeness (Nooteboom, 2013). Organizational trust is therefore particularly important during crisis as it facilitates the ability of organizational members to successfully navigate and respond constructively to challenging events (Mishra, 1996), particularly where contexts of disruption may also threaten employee trust in the organization (Gustafsson et al., 2021). Moreover, the dynamic nature of trust is particularly evident during crises (Möllering, 2013) as well as the question of how to repair damaged trust after crises (Bachmann et al., 2015).
 
This sub-theme takes trust in and between organizations and institutions in the context of crisis as its central focus and seeks to promote a cross-disciplinary dialogue. The crossroads that the 40^th EGOS Colloquium wants to discuss in Milan are particularly critical where organizations face crises and have to take far-ranging decisions about their future directions. Hence, the aim of this sub-theme is to advance our conceptual understanding of trust at various levels and in different phases of crisis, and to reflect critically on its nature, dynamics, processes, antecedents and consequences. The sub-theme will be open to empirical research, theoretical papers and insightful reviews on trust and crisis. Examples of relevant topics to be addressed include the following:

• The process of building, preserving and repairing trust in different phases of crisis management

• Antecedents and processes of trust across organizational, institutional and cultural contexts

• Organizational and institutional trust in relation to performance and innovativeness during crises

• Multi- and cross-level perspectives on global/local, personal/societal crises

• The specific challenges of different types of crises, including also emergencies and meta-crises

• The downsides of trust in crisis management such as path-dependency or exploitation

• Globalization and trans-national issues concerning crisis and conflict

• Crisis management in a context of organizational complexity

• The role of trust in the face of crossroads scenarios
   

References

• Ansell, C., & Boin, A. (2019). Taming deep uncertainty: The potential of pragmatist principles for understanding and improving strategic crisis management. Administration & Society, 51 (7), 1079–1112.
• Bachmann, R., Gillespie, N., & Priem, R. (2015). Repairing trust in organizations and institutions: Toward a conceptual framework. Organization Studies, 36, 1123–1142.
• Corbacioglu, S., & Kapucu, N. (2006). Organisational learning and self adaptation in dynamic disaster environments. Disasters, 30 (2), 212–233.
• Curnin, S., Owen, C., Paton, D., Trist, C., & Parsons, D. (2015). Role clarity, swift trust and multi‐agency coordination. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 23 (1),29–35.
• Gustafsson, S., Gillespie, N., Searle, R., Hope Hailey, V., & Dietz, G. (2021). Preserving trust during disruption. Organization Studies, 42 (9), 1409–1433.
• Kapucu, N. (2006). Interagency communication networks during emergencies boundary spanners in multiagency coordination. American Review of Public Administration, 36 (2), 207–225.
• Kapucu, N., Arslan, T., & Collins, M. L. (2010). Examining intergovernmental and interorganizational response to catastrophic disasters: Toward a network-centered approach. Administration & Society, 42 (2), 222–247.
• McGuire, M. (2006). Collaborative public management: Assessing what we know and how we know it. Public Administration Review, 66, 33–43.
• Mishra, A. (1996). Organizational response to crisis: The centrality of trust. In Kramer, R. & Tyler, T. (Eds.), Trust in organizations: Frontiers of theory and research, London: SAGE, pp. 261–287.
• Möllering, G. (2013). Process views of trusting and crises. In: Bachmann, R. & Zaheer, A. (Eds.): Handbook of Advances in Trust Research. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 285–305.
• Nooteboom, B. (2013). Trust and innovation. In: Bachmann, R. & Zaheer, A. (Eds.): Handbook of Advances in Trust Research. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 106–122.
• Owen, G., & Currie, G. (2022). Beyond the Crisis: Trust repair in an interorganizational network. Organization Studies, 43 (8), 1273–1295.
• Pearson, C. M., & Clair, J. A. (1998). Reframing crisis management. Academy of Management Review, 23 (1), 59–76.
• Provan, K. G., & Kenis, P. (2008). Modes of network governance: Structure, management, and effectiveness. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 18, 229–252.
• Roud, E., & Gausdal, A. H. (2019). Trust and emergency management: Experiences from the Arctic Sea region. Journal of Trust Research, 9 (2), 203–225.
• Steen, R., & Morsut, C. (2020). Resilience in crisis management at the municipal level: The synne storm in Norway. Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy, 11 (1), 35–60.
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