A Social Contract for Biotechnology: Shared Visions for Risky Technologies?

Future technological developmentsconcerning food, agriculture, and theenvironment face a gulf of social legitimationfrom a skeptical public and media, in the wakeof the crises of BSE, GM food, and foot andmouth disease in the UK (House of Lords, 2000). Keyethical issues were ignored by the bioindustry,regulators, and the Government, leaving alegacy of distrust. The paper examinesagricultural biotechnology in terms of a socialcontract, whose conditions would have to be fulfilled togain acceptance of novel applications. Variouscurrent and future GM applications areevaluated against these conditions. Successwould depend critically on how far a sharedvision can be found with the public. Tore-establish trust, significant changes areidentified in the planning and pursuit ofbiotechnology.     

How transformational leadership influences follower helping behavior: The role of trust and prosocial motivation

We proposed and tested a moderated mediation model that jointly examines affect‐based and cognition‐based trust as the mediators and prosocial motivation as the moderator in relationships between transformational leadership and followers’ helping behavior towards coworkers. Data were collected from 348 sales and servicing employees and their supervisors in four private retail companies and five private manufacturing companies located in Southeast China. The results showed that both affect‐based trust and cognition‐based trust mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and followers’ helping behavior towards coworkers. Furthermore, moderated mediation analyses showed that affect‐based trust mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and followers’ helping behavior towards coworkers only among employees with high prosocial motivation, whereas cognition‐based trust mediated this relationship among only those with low prosocial motivation. Implications for the theory and practice of leadership are then discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Partners under pressure: humanitarian action for the Syria crisis

Partnerships between organisations in humanitarian crisis situations generally are challenging, but at the apex are those established as part of remote management in a context of extreme insecurity. To date, little systematic research has been conducted on arrangements between local organisations that have access to crisis‐affected populations and international organisations that hold the purse strings. This paper presents the findings of nine months of qualitative research conducted with five Syrian local organisations and their international partners engaging in humanitarian action across the Turkey–Syria border, and presents insights into the components of successful partnerships. It redefines capacity along organisational and operational lines, and unpacks how monitoring and evaluation and donor requirements create tension and, at times, place local organisations at risk. The paper highlights the centrality of trust in successful partnerships, and describes the personalisation of the conflict by local organisations. Based on a historical case study of civil society in northern Iraq, it closes with some suggestions for long‐term sustainability.     

Justice and job engagement: The role of senior management trust

We examined whether job engagement mediated the effects of organizational justice dimensions on work behaviors and attitudes. Considering distributive and procedural justice from a motivational perspective, we proposed that job engagement would mediate these two dimensions' relations with the work outcomes of task performance, organizational citizenship behavior, and job satisfaction. We also expected this mediation effect would be magnified when senior management trust (SMT) was high. Our results showed that the simple mediation model was supported only for distributive justice. Alternatively, the indirect effect of procedural justice on work outcomes through job engagement was significant only when SMT was high. Implications of our findings and areas for future research are discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.