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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Gift Giving And The Creation Of Trust, Martin Mathews Jan 2010

Gift Giving And The Creation Of Trust, Martin Mathews

Martin Mathews

We examine the role that gift giving plays in industrial districts and in particular the role of gift giving in the creation of inter-organisational trust. Inter-organisational exchanges in a mature industrial district are analyzed using Mauss’ theoretical framework of gift-giving, receiving and counter-giving. Actors in embedded network relationships frequently exchange gifts and favours. This gift giving is a fundamental part of the relationship. Gift giving is found to be instrumental in creating and maintaining relationships, defining group and individual identity and resolving conflicts. The originality of our findings lies in the fact that despite the ideology of the purely altruistic …


The Science Of Interpersonal Trust, Randy Borum Jan 2010

The Science Of Interpersonal Trust, Randy Borum

Randy Borum

Interpersonal trust - a willingness to accept vulnerability or risk based on expectations regarding another person’s behavior – is a vitally important concept for human behavior, affecting our interactions both with adversaries and competitors as well as with allies and friends. Indeed, interpersonal trust could be said to be responsible in part for nudging competitors towards becoming allies, or – if betrayed – leading friends to become adversaries.

This document summarizes the state of the art (and science) in interpersonal trust research, describing how researchers define trust and its components, exploring a range of theories about how people decide whether …


Mindsets: Sensemaking And Transition In Negotiation, Mara Olekalns, Philip L. Smith Dec 2009

Mindsets: Sensemaking And Transition In Negotiation, Mara Olekalns, Philip L. Smith

Mara Olekalns

A negotiation’s opening moments are characterized by high levels of uncertainty. During this phase, individuals screen each other’s behavior for clues about underlying goals and motives. Much of this information is conveyed implicitly by the language that negotiators use. The words they choose and the way they respond to the other party provide important clues about negotiators’ dominant goals and strategy preferences. At the same time, negotiators use incoming information to assess the other party’s intentions. In negotiation, this uncertainty resolves itself into questions about the other party’s trustworthiness. Because negotiations are characterized by a vulnerability to the actions of …