This paper investigates the relationships between organizational change and trust in management. It is argued that organizational change represents a critical episode for the production and destruction of trust in management. Although trust in management is seen as a semi stable psychological state, changes in organizations make trust issues salient and organizational members attend to and process trust relevant information resulting in a reassessment of their trust in management. The direction and magnitude of change in trust is dependent on a set of change dimensions that reflect trust relevant experiences and information. We distinguish between dimensions related to trust relevant consequences of the change and trust relevant aspects of how the change process is performed. Empirical results indicate that increases in post change emotional stress and the use of referential accounts for justifying change are both negatively related to post change trust in management. The use of ideological accounts and participation were found to be positively related to post change trust in management, so was perceived decision quality. Findings also indicate that the effects of change on trust are negatively moderated by tenure.

ABSTRACT. Across two studies the hypotheses were tested that stressful situations affect both leadership ethical acting and leaders' recognition of ethical dilemmas. In the studies, decision makers recruited from 3 sites of a Swedish multinational civil engineering company provided personal data on stressful situations, made ethical decisions, and answered to stress-outcome questions. Stressful situations were observed to have a greater impact on ethical acting than on the recognition of ethical dilemmas. This was particularly true for situations involving punishment and lack of rewards. The results are important for the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) of an organization, especially with regard to the analysis of the stressors influencing managerial work and its implications for ethical behavior.

In a couple of classical studies, Keeney proposed two sets of variables labelled as value‐focused thinking (VFT) and alternative‐focused thinking (AFT). Value‐focused thinking (VFT), he argued, is a creative method that centres on the different decision objectives and how as many alternatives as possible may be generated from them. Alternative‐focused thinking (AFT), on the other hand, is a method in which the decision maker takes notice of all the available alternatives and then makes a choice that seems to fit the problem best. The impact of these two methods on idea generation was measured using a sample of employees. The results revealed that employees in the value‐focused thinking condition (VFT) produced fewer ideas. Thus, value‐focused thinking (VFT) is not only able to facilitate ideation fluency but also to constrain it. Factors such as cognitive effort and motivation may play a part here. However, the quality of the ideas was judged to be higher in terms of creativity and innovativeness. Hence, value‐focused thinking (VFT) seems to have a positive impact on the quality of ideas in terms of creativity and innovativeness regardless of ideation fluency. Implications for the design of idea management systems are discussed.

In this paper we look at how managers perceive and manage meetings between different institutional logics in three types of hybrid organisations; a savings bank, a municipality and a hospital. The paper contributes to our understanding of organisational hybridity in two ways: First, drawing on Scott's three institutional pillars, the paper shows how meetings between different institutional logics involve not just the cultural-cognitive pillar, usually highlighted in work on hybrid organisations, but all of them, including the regulative and the normative pillars. Second, the paper suggests a hierarchical relationship between meetings and responses, ranging from less elaborate responses that primarily involve the regulative pillar to more complex and all-encompassing responses that include not only the regulative and the normative but also the cultural-cognitive pillar, triggering questions and issues about identity and purpose.

Crisis prevention plans are usually evaluated based on their effects in terms of preventing or limiting organizational crisis. In this survey-based study, the focus was instead on how such plans influence employees' reactions in terms of risk perception and well-being. Five different organizations were addressed in the study. Hypothesis 1 tested the assumption that leadership crisis preparation would lead to lower perceived risk among the employees. Hypothesis 2 tested the conjecture that it would also lead to a higher degree of well-being. Both hypotheses were supported. The results and their implications are discussed.