CTPSR hosts trust conference

The Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations hosted 90 delegates from over 21 countries on the 5-7 Nov for the 8th Conference on Trust Within and Between Organisations.

Proceedings started with an invited panel highlighting how and why trust matters, featuring contributions from Cannon David Porter, (Director for Reconciliation for the Archbishop of Canterbury), Richard Butler (CBI’s Director for the West Midlands and Oxfordshire), Dr. Sam Gorse (Coventry researcher of trust and sport) and Sarah Warnes (Area Commander West Midlands Fire Service). This initial panel really set the tone for the rest of the event with the subsequent three keynotes offering their perspective on the applications of trust.

The keynotes included Professor Roger Mayer of North Carolina State University, responsible for one of the formative taxonomies on trustworthiness, who presented “Trust: Do you think there is a market for that?". His speech looked at the applications of trust across an array of contexts and showed how timely our work has become. Next, Brigadier David Greenwood, drew on his deep experiences of trust within a military context to consider “Trust and Leadership– a two-way street?”. Finally, George Hamilton,  Chief Constable of Northern Ireland Police Service reflected on trust in the challenging context of the police service. The latter two keynotes were open to the public as part of the city's Peace Festival.

Professor Antoinette Weibel, president of FINT commented "FINT 2014 was a fantastic conference as the organisers really reached out into the community. Keynotes showed that trust matters - and increasingly so in these daring times. We all left home with a bag of ideas and inspiration for future research".

Linked to the main conference, CTPSR also ran a very well received two day PhD and early career workshop for 30 delegates, sponsored by the Society for the Advancement of Management Studies. The team (Dr. Ann Marie Neinaber, Coventry; Professor Mark Saunders, University of Surrey and Dr. Shay Tzafiri , University of Haifa) delivered an outstanding programme including inputs on research skills, publications, discrimination and impact. Highlights that these delegates’ mentioned included Prof. Martin Kilduff (UCL) former editor of Academy of Management Review, and now associate editor of Administrative Science Quarterly talking about conducting ethical research. Another highlight was  the ‘Getting Published’ panel which featured Prof. Kilduff, and Prof. Mayer, plus Prof Mark Saunders, Prof Shay Tzafir, Prof Antoinette Weibel, and also Prof Sim Sitkin (Duke), and Prof Deanne den Hartog (Amsterdam). Read the pre-conference report here: FINT PhD and Early Career Researchers Workshop

 Dr. Finian Buckley (Dublin City) who will organise the 9th FINT Conference commented “Coventry really raised the bar for what we have to deliver in 2016”.

Reflecting on both these events, CTPSR’s Professor Rosalind Searle said “we had a plan in our head of what we wanted to achieve, thanks to a team working together and the complete engagement of the FINT board, but also importantly our practitioners who were so thoughtful and thought-provoking in their inputs, it feels like we have created so much more. People not only stayed to the end, but they are still talking and tweeting about it. From this event FINT have identified the need for an impact group, of which we will be part, and so we really put Coventry on the map as the go to place for exciting and impactful research on trust”.