Conference Presentations by Badri Nooshin Zolfaghari
Trust held within and across organisational members has been identified as leading to universal a... more Trust held within and across organisational members has been identified as leading to universal and situation specific consequences by directly or indirectly influencing attitudes, perceptions, behaviours, and performance outcomes within organizational settings (Ferrin and Gillespie, 2010; Dirks and Ferrin, 2001). Across national cultures, trust is predictive of performance and commitment formation (Cook et al., 2005). Higher levels of trust result in positive attitudes, higher levels of cooperation and job satisfaction as well as superior performance. Trust also promotes acceptance of influence, interdependence, information sharing, communication and reduction of control (Gillespie, 2003).
Given the presence of culturally diverse workforce in organisations, the development of trust becomes a challenging task seeing as culture influences the dynamic nature of trust in a variety of ways (Doney et al., 1998; Dietz et al., 2010). Culture impacts an individual’s willingness to trust through societal factors such as family upbringing, schooling and education, national wealth, democratic governance and security (Gelfand et al., 2007; Luhmann, 1979; Fukuyama, 1995), moreover, given that individuals acquire cultural schema that is based on their past experiences, it also provides a filter through which the behaviour of others is interpreted as trustworthy or not.
To this end, this paper seeks to unravel how within a culturally diverse organisational setting, high-level trust or distrust can be developed. It does so by adopting the view that an individual’s culture is a composite of facets that result in the individual holding multiple cultural identities (Chao and Moon, 2005), and in a given organisational setting, shared or discordant cultural identities across the team members can either result in the enactment of trust and interpretation of trustee’s trustworthy behaviour, or result in the absence of trust and the presence of distrust, despite high levels of disposition to trust and assessments of the trustee’s trustworthiness (Gillespie, 2003). Adopting a 5-stage trust development model (Dietz et al., 2010), this paper provides a comparative process view between interactions that led to high-trust versus interactions that resulted in distrust, providing detailed accounts of each stage as they progress.
Workforce diversity has become a source of competitive advantage for multinational corporations a... more Workforce diversity has become a source of competitive advantage for multinational corporations as it enhances innovation and creativity, strengthens cultural values of the organization and enhances corporate reputation and in sum, enables organizations to facilitate the achievement of their strategic goals. However these benefits are not gained without their challenges. Communication style, organizational commitment, integration and acculturation, work behaviour and value congruency are some of the challenges organisational members encounter when collaborating with colleagues from a different cultural background. This paper aims to explore how in such circumstances organizational members build, maintain and increase the level of trust with their respective counterpart in order to facilitate the achievement of organisation objectives by increasing the willingness to accept higher levels of risk, uncertainty and tolerance for ambiguity. It further examines the possible role of individual’s cultural intelligence as a moderator on the trust development process. Therefore this paper contributes to theory by exploring the dynamics between cross cultural encounters and trust development as an outcome.
Data was collected in three stages using questionnaires which were followed up by semi structured interviews from 43 participants working in multinational corporations. Interviews were conducted in the UK, Germany and South Africa across organization level. Preliminary findings thus far suggest that nationality should no longer be used as a proxy for cross cultural research, the study unraveled other facets of individual’s culture that strongly influenced their general willingness to trust, their assessment of their counterparts trustworthiness as well as their work behaviour. Cultural intelligence demonstrated to have an effect on individual’s disposition to trust and was influenced by individual’s level of education. Further contextual factors influenced the trust development process which will be discussed in the subsequent sections of this paper.
Papers by Badri Nooshin Zolfaghari
Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, Dec 20, 2022
Research on the formation of prosocial ventures has attracted substantial interest in the field o... more Research on the formation of prosocial ventures has attracted substantial interest in the field of social entrepreneurship for more than a decade. Yet, the understanding of how prosocial founders use judgments for the assessment of opportunity-related information to create prosocial ventures remains relatively unexamined. We conducted an abductive, qualitative study with 34 first-time founders using verbal protocols and content analysis techniques to explore how founders with ‘other-oriented’ social identities judge venture ideas in contrast to founders with ‘me-oriented’ social identities. As a result, we theorise a model which reveals how the motivation and subjective goals of prosocial founders influence their venture idea judgments and meaning-making processes. We contribute to the social entrepreneurship literature by displaying how founders with social goal-motivations gain opportunity confidence through their choice of judgement criteria during opportunity evaluation.
Proceedings - Academy of Management, Aug 1, 2022
Proceedings - Academy of Management, Aug 1, 2023
European Management Journal, Apr 1, 2016
Proceedings - Academy of Management, Aug 1, 2022
Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks, Jan 19, 2021
Journal of International Management, Dec 1, 2022
Building trusting, multicultural organizations require us to accentuate ‘sharedness’ rather than ... more Building trusting, multicultural organizations require us to accentuate ‘sharedness’ rather than identifying differences. This study investigates how organizational members activate multiple sources of cultural values to develop trust with their colleagues from different cultural backgrounds. Through a series of surveys followed by semi-structured interviews, data were collected from members operating in five different multinational organizations based in Germany and South Africa. Analyzed abductively, our findings illustrate the multiple sources of cultural values that influence members' disposition to trust and their assessment of their colleague's trustworthiness. We further show how four levels of trust emerge as an outcome of the interplay between these various cultural dimensions. Through our multidimensional operationalization of culture, we show how variations, not only across, but within individuals can hinder or promote trusting relationships in the workplace. This study highlights the need for more nuanced approaches towards the examination of the influence of culture on trust.
International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour & Research, Mar 21, 2023
Trust is an integral feature of human relations, and in turbulent and uncertain times trust serve... more Trust is an integral feature of human relations, and in turbulent and uncertain times trust serves as a tool that enables organisational members to accept higher levels of risk and increases their willingness to cooperate with each other on a dyadic, group and organisational level. However, the development of trust can be significantly hindered or even obstructed in culturally unfamiliar settings, and between parties who come from different cultural backgrounds. This thesis aims to fill the gap in the literature pertaining to culture’s influence on trust and trust development and the ways in which trust can be formed and enhanced between individuals from different cultural backgrounds. It adopts the ‘mosaic’ conceptualisation of culture in order to overcome the limitations associated with using nationality as a proxy for culture and to address the multiplicity of cultural influences on behaviour. This unravels the etic and emic determinants of culture on trust and its development across cultures. It also accounts for the role of governing contextual factors (i.e. organisational factors and individuals’ cultural intelligence) on this process. Through undertaking a mixed-method approach, data was collected from participants via surveys followed by semi-structured interviews. Data collection took place in Durham, UK, Munich, Germany and Cape Town/Johannesburg, South Africa from individuals operating in various multinational organisations, and across different organisation levels. This method of data collection resulted in rich and detailed accounts of how individuals adopt different cultural identities and how they develop (dis)trust with their counterpart from a different cultural background. Overall, findings from this research confirm the mosaic conceptualisation of culture and reject the use of nationality as proxy for culture. It further reveals that individuals adopt multiple cultural identities in order to display trusting behaviour in the workplace, where some cultural facets (i.e. Family, Organisation and Profession) are more influential on the trust development process than others (i.e. Nationality, Religion, Political Affiliation, etc.). Trust development is enhanced when dyads share cultural values and is hindered when they encounter conflicting values, and is moderated by their level of cultural intelligence.
International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research
PurposeThis paper adds to the ongoing debate on judgements, opportunity evaluation and founder id... more PurposeThis paper adds to the ongoing debate on judgements, opportunity evaluation and founder identity theory and shows that founders vary in their prioritisation and combination of judgement criteria, linked to their respective social founder identity. It further reveals how this variation among founder identity types shapes their perception of distinct entrepreneurial opportunities and the forming of first-person opportunity beliefs.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses a qualitative approach by presenting three business scenarios to a sample of 34 first-time founders. It adopts a first-person perspective on their cognitive processes during the evaluation of entrepreneurial opportunities using verbal protocol and content analysis techniques.FindingsThe theorised model highlights the use of similar categories of judgement criteria by individual founders during opportunity evaluation that followed two distinct stages, namely search and validation. Yet, founders individualised ...
International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour & Research, 2023
Purpose-This paper adds to the ongoing debate on judgements, opportunity evaluation and founder i... more Purpose-This paper adds to the ongoing debate on judgements, opportunity evaluation and founder identity theory and shows that founders vary in their prioritisation and combination of judgement criteria, linked to their respective social founder identity. It further reveals how this variation among founder identity types shapes their perception of distinct entrepreneurial opportunities and the forming of first-person opportunity beliefs. Design/methodology/approach-This study uses a qualitative approach by presenting three business scenarios to a sample of 34 first-time founders. It adopts a first-person perspective on their cognitive processes during the evaluation of entrepreneurial opportunities using verbal protocol and content analysis techniques. Findings-The theorised model highlights the use of similar categories of judgement criteria by individual founders during opportunity evaluation that followed two distinct stages, namely search and validation. Yet, founders individualised their judgement process through the prioritisation of different judgement criteria. Originality/value-The authors provide new insights into how individuals individuate entrepreneurial opportunities through the choice of different judgement criteria that enable them to develop opportunity confidence during opportunity evaluation. The study also shows that first-time founders depict variations in their cognitive frames that are based on their social identity types as they assess opportunity-related information and elicit variations in reciprocal relationships emerging between emotion and cognition. Exposing these subjective cognitive evaluative processes provides theoretical and practical implications that are discussed as well.
Journal of Social Entrepreneurship
Research on the formation of prosocial ventures has attracted substantial interest in the field o... more Research on the formation of prosocial ventures has attracted substantial interest in the field of social entrepreneurship for more than a decade. Yet, the understanding of how prosocial founders use judgments for the assessment of opportunity-related information to create prosocial ventures remains relatively unexamined. We conducted an abductive, qualitative study with 34 first-time founders using verbal protocols and content analysis techniques to explore how founders with ‘other-oriented’ social identities judge venture ideas in contrast to founders with ‘me-oriented’ social identities. As a result, we theorise a model which reveals how the motivation and subjective goals of prosocial founders influence their venture idea judgments and meaning-making processes. We contribute to the social entrepreneurship literature by displaying how founders with social goal-motivations gain opportunity confidence through their choice of judgement criteria during opportunity evaluation.
Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, 2022
Research on the formation of prosocial ventures has attracted substantial interest in the field o... more Research on the formation of prosocial ventures has attracted substantial interest in the field of social entrepreneurship for more than a decade. Yet, the understanding of how prosocial founders use judgments for the assessment of opportunity-related information to create prosocial ventures remains relatively unexamined. We conducted an abductive, qualitative study with 34 first-time founders using verbal protocols and content analysis techniques to explore how founders with ‘other-oriented’ social identities judge venture ideas in contrast to founders with ‘me-oriented’ social identities. As a result, we theorise a model which reveals how the motivation and subjective goals of prosocial founders influence their venture idea judgments and meaning-making processes. We contribute to the social entrepreneurship literature by displaying how founders with social goal-motivations gain opportunity confidence through their choice of judgement criteria during opportunity evaluation.
Journal of International Management, 2022
Building trusting, multicultural organizations require us to accentuate ‘sharedness’ rather than ... more Building trusting, multicultural organizations require us to accentuate ‘sharedness’ rather than identifying differences. This study investigates how organizational members activate multiple sources of cultural values to develop trust with their colleagues from different cultural backgrounds. Through a series of surveys followed by semi-structured interviews, data were collected from members operating in five different multinational organizations based in Germany and South Africa. Analyzed abductively, our findings illustrate the multiple sources of cultural values that influence members' disposition to trust and their assessment of their colleague's trustworthiness. We further show how four levels of trust emerge as an outcome of the interplay between these various cultural dimensions. Through our multidimensional operationalization of culture, we show how variations, not only across, but within individuals can hinder or promote trusting relationships in the workplace. This study highlights the need for more nuanced approaches towards the examination of the influence of culture on trust.
Field Guide to Intercultural Research, 2021
Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment, 2021
European Management Journal, 2016
Journal of International Management, 2022
Building trusting, multicultural organizations require us to accentuate ‘sharedness’ rather than ... more Building trusting, multicultural organizations require us to accentuate ‘sharedness’ rather than identifying differences. This study investigates how organizational members activate multiple sources of cultural values to develop trust with their colleagues from different cultural backgrounds. Through a series of surveys followed by semi-structured interviews, data were collected from members operating in five different multinational organizations based in Germany and South Africa. Analyzed abductively, our findings illustrate the multiple sources of cultural values that influence members' disposition to trust and their assessment of their colleague's trustworthiness. We further show how four levels of trust emerge as an outcome of the interplay between these various cultural dimensions. Through our multidimensional operationalization of culture, we show how variations, not only across, but within individuals can hinder or promote trusting relationships in the workplace. This study highlights the need for more nuanced approaches towards the examination of the influence of culture on trust.
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Conference Presentations by Badri Nooshin Zolfaghari
Given the presence of culturally diverse workforce in organisations, the development of trust becomes a challenging task seeing as culture influences the dynamic nature of trust in a variety of ways (Doney et al., 1998; Dietz et al., 2010). Culture impacts an individual’s willingness to trust through societal factors such as family upbringing, schooling and education, national wealth, democratic governance and security (Gelfand et al., 2007; Luhmann, 1979; Fukuyama, 1995), moreover, given that individuals acquire cultural schema that is based on their past experiences, it also provides a filter through which the behaviour of others is interpreted as trustworthy or not.
To this end, this paper seeks to unravel how within a culturally diverse organisational setting, high-level trust or distrust can be developed. It does so by adopting the view that an individual’s culture is a composite of facets that result in the individual holding multiple cultural identities (Chao and Moon, 2005), and in a given organisational setting, shared or discordant cultural identities across the team members can either result in the enactment of trust and interpretation of trustee’s trustworthy behaviour, or result in the absence of trust and the presence of distrust, despite high levels of disposition to trust and assessments of the trustee’s trustworthiness (Gillespie, 2003). Adopting a 5-stage trust development model (Dietz et al., 2010), this paper provides a comparative process view between interactions that led to high-trust versus interactions that resulted in distrust, providing detailed accounts of each stage as they progress.
Data was collected in three stages using questionnaires which were followed up by semi structured interviews from 43 participants working in multinational corporations. Interviews were conducted in the UK, Germany and South Africa across organization level. Preliminary findings thus far suggest that nationality should no longer be used as a proxy for cross cultural research, the study unraveled other facets of individual’s culture that strongly influenced their general willingness to trust, their assessment of their counterparts trustworthiness as well as their work behaviour. Cultural intelligence demonstrated to have an effect on individual’s disposition to trust and was influenced by individual’s level of education. Further contextual factors influenced the trust development process which will be discussed in the subsequent sections of this paper.
Papers by Badri Nooshin Zolfaghari
Given the presence of culturally diverse workforce in organisations, the development of trust becomes a challenging task seeing as culture influences the dynamic nature of trust in a variety of ways (Doney et al., 1998; Dietz et al., 2010). Culture impacts an individual’s willingness to trust through societal factors such as family upbringing, schooling and education, national wealth, democratic governance and security (Gelfand et al., 2007; Luhmann, 1979; Fukuyama, 1995), moreover, given that individuals acquire cultural schema that is based on their past experiences, it also provides a filter through which the behaviour of others is interpreted as trustworthy or not.
To this end, this paper seeks to unravel how within a culturally diverse organisational setting, high-level trust or distrust can be developed. It does so by adopting the view that an individual’s culture is a composite of facets that result in the individual holding multiple cultural identities (Chao and Moon, 2005), and in a given organisational setting, shared or discordant cultural identities across the team members can either result in the enactment of trust and interpretation of trustee’s trustworthy behaviour, or result in the absence of trust and the presence of distrust, despite high levels of disposition to trust and assessments of the trustee’s trustworthiness (Gillespie, 2003). Adopting a 5-stage trust development model (Dietz et al., 2010), this paper provides a comparative process view between interactions that led to high-trust versus interactions that resulted in distrust, providing detailed accounts of each stage as they progress.
Data was collected in three stages using questionnaires which were followed up by semi structured interviews from 43 participants working in multinational corporations. Interviews were conducted in the UK, Germany and South Africa across organization level. Preliminary findings thus far suggest that nationality should no longer be used as a proxy for cross cultural research, the study unraveled other facets of individual’s culture that strongly influenced their general willingness to trust, their assessment of their counterparts trustworthiness as well as their work behaviour. Cultural intelligence demonstrated to have an effect on individual’s disposition to trust and was influenced by individual’s level of education. Further contextual factors influenced the trust development process which will be discussed in the subsequent sections of this paper.