Transcript Staff Induction - Letterkenny Institute of Technology

The role of trust in
innovation systems: An
Irish Festival
experience – Conor Mc
Tiernan
School of Tourism, LYIT
Introduction
 The purpose of this study is to examine the role of trust
in achieving the individual organisational goals of
members of an Irish festival innovation system (IS).
 PhD inspired by Anne-Mette Hjalager’s 2009 paper
Cultural Tourism Innovation Systems - The
Roskilde Festival.
 I was intrigued by her analysis of the co-operation
between private and public stakeholders, engagement
with the local community; the tangible and intangible
benefits for festival organising committee, local
community and other local and regional stakeholders.
Most importantly, level of trust between
stakeholders.
Rationale for study
 Prompted the question – what are the antecedents for,
and barriers and enablers of achieving an organisations
objectives within an innovation system and does such
collaboration exist within the Irish festival industry?
 Have found case studies on a variety of innovation
systems, including tourism related IS, many refer to
importance of trust, but I haven't found any specifically
addressing the role of trust in festival or event IS, nor do
I know of a forthcoming study from an Irish perspective.
What’s the rationale for an IS?
 Collaboration is a method of improving innovation
performance (Wang et al, 2011).
 Facilitates sharing of knowledge for purpose of improving
products and processes (Cohen and Levinthall, 1990).
 They enhance knowledge management (KM) skills (Galbraith,
2002) and Argote and Ingram (2000) posit IS are closely
linked with innovation and competitive advantage.
 Davenport and Prusak (2000) emphasise close relationship
between organisational culture and KM and Easterby-Smith et
al (1998) stress the importance of the social contexts in which
individuals and organisations learn.
 IS are more than just knowledge sharing entities - many
variables to be considered.
Is structure of IS important?
 Many studies site Schumpeter, Marshall etc. in the
1930’s. Can take many forms – NIS, RIS. Most tourism
studies examine networks and clusters Hjalager, Cooper
etc.
 Networks - Oughton and Whittam (1997) suggest nonmarket relationships, require active rather than passive
involvement, a-spatially located members to achieve
goals using co-operation rather than competition.
 Clusters - (Ter Wal and Boschma, 2011 from Asheim,
2011) market relationships, typically spatially restrictive
and competitive by nature.
Central issue…KM in IS
 Knowledge management and related knowledge transfer:
Canter et al (2011), Rhodes et al (2008) - knowledge
acquisition, identification, development, diffusion and
usage.
 Two types of knowledge: Explicit and Tacit and (Argote
and Ingram, 2000) tacit knowledge transfer considered
more difficult due to knowledge embeddedness in
individuals and teams and (Tsai, 2001) knowledge
stickiness.
 Other knowledge issues include:
 absorption capacity (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990),
 articulation and codification (Cohendat and
Steinmueller, 2000)
 the taxonomy of knowledge transfer (Spraggon and
Bodolicia, 2011)
KM from and organisational view
 Bagio and Cooper (2010) suggest comparing KT to the
diffusion of a disease - recipient must be ‘susceptible’
and become ‘infected’ – organisation may ‘recover’ as
knowledge gaps identified have been closed or become
‘susceptible’ again.
 Organisational culture must have a positive outlook to
KT (Novelli et al, 2006) and buy-in to the process and
encourage development of relational capital through
regular face-to-face meetings (Dyer and Singh, 1998).
Mohr and Nevin (1990) suggest sharing solutions to
problems etc. encourages relational capital.
 Dovey (2009) posits that trust is evidence of such
relational capital.
Role of organisation culture
 Sounds great – shouldn’t every organisation embrace IS and
KM???
 Cameron and Quinn’s (1999) Competing Values Framework
suggests 4 types of organisation cultures based on their
internal and external focus in terms of differentiating or
integrating with competitors and their desire for stability and
control vs those who are flexible and allow discretion to
employees.
 Cooke (2001), Bagio and Cooper (2010), Shaw and Williams
(2009), Jones (2005) show IS whose member organisations
support new ideas, have senior management support and
allocate appropriate resources to networks, who promote
social cohesion in a horizontal/ non-hierarchical have the best
chance of success – so its not for everyone.
Maybe if the circumstances were right
 If organisations trust each other might that diminish the
individuals and the organisations lack of desire to participate?
 Consistently, academic studies on Tourism IS refer to trust as
an enabler of Knowledge transfer.
 Nahapiet and Ghosal (1998) posit Trust is a social capital
resource, embedded in people and developed over time.
 Its an alternative to contracts.
 Trust is a fragile resource (Maurer, 2010) – important to have
stability in collaboration team.
 People must expose vulnerabilities – not easy. Clegg et al
(2002) proposed 2 key imperatives ‘Trust that is heard’ and
‘trust that will benefit’.
Why trust, why join an IS?
 Organisations partake in collaborations to achieve stated
organisational goals – ergo they act in an individualistic
manner.
 Collaboration partners must align their selfish motivations,
which according to Khatri and Tsang (2003) creates cliques
and classifies people as ingroup or outgroup members where
ingroup members are given interaction, rewards, support and
trust.
 Erez and Earley (1993) state that ingroup members place
importance on relational capital and Bunduchi (2008) posits
KT should therefore not be considered in terms of traditional
transaction cost economics but in terms of relational
exchanges. Given this, Lambe, Wittmann and Speakman
(2001) support the use of Social Exchange Theory (SET) to
understand these collaborative relationships.
What is SET?
 Frame of reference that allows for movement of valued
resources through a social process based on rewarding
reactions from others (Emerson, 1976).
 It acknowledges that exchanges are dependant on
attitudes of people who frequently engage in mutually
rewarding exchanges.
What exactly is Trust?
 Diverging views of trust – economists, psychologists,
sociologists. No interdisciplinary definition.
 Much commonality – trust requires presence of risk.
 In general, trust is based on fact that the trustor (giver of
trust) believes trustee (recipient of trust) will not exploit
vulnerabilities.
 Trust is a psychological state based on rational choice and
behaviour (Kramer, 1999).
 Trust exists in many forms; Multi-level, trust between
organisations, multidisciplinary trust, trust as a cause/impact
or moderator and finally trust as an impact of organisation
change (Rousseau et al, 1998)
Bases of trust
 Much debate in academia, yet in general it is
acknowledged there are at least six bases of trust; first
two based on individual perception and behaviours :
1. Dispositional trust
2. History based trust
 Remaining four are forms of presumptive trust:
3. Third party as conduits of trust
4. Category based trust
5. Role based trust
6. Rule based trust
Structure and indicators of trust
 Trust is not static; moves from calculative based trust to
relational trust over time – yet this is predicated by the
existence in institutional trust (Rousseau et al).
 At multidisciplinary level common language in terms of
indicators of trust; ability, benevolence and integrity.
Methodology
 Have support from AOIFE.
 As the study is framed by AIOFE, Anderson et al (1994)
suggest development of case study and Stake (1995)
posits that this allows for researcher to interact
sufficiently with respondents.
 Propose a non-positivistic paradigm as it allows for
contextual interaction between actors and construct to
meaning of terms (Hakensonn and Snehota, 1997)
 Potentially using Jacksons four step scale construction:
1. theoretical based definitions,
2. reliability and homogeneity,
3. suppression of response bias and
4. convergent and discrimination validity.
Potential research questions
 The purpose of this study is to examine the role of trust in achieving
the individual organisational goals of members of an Irish festival
innovation system (IS).
 Key objectives of the study may include assessment or examination
of:
 Participation rates of AOIFE members in ingroup and outgroup
collaboration projects,
 Key challenges and barriers to the adoption of appropriate
knowledge transfer conduits within Irish festival IS,
 The antecedents and determinants of trust in an Irish festival IS
context,
 The relationship between trust and knowledge transfer in ingroup
and outgroup exchange,
 The role of trust in achievement of IS collaboration goals
 The role of trust in the achievement of the organisations goals when
they are members of IS’s.