Crisis, criticisms, and damaged credibility: A case study of organisational trust repair by a Victorian joint-stock bank
本文以1847年商业危机中暂停付款的利物浦皇家银行为案例，运用组织信任修复模型，分析其如何通过诉诸声誉、协调利益相关者期望和重新界定权力边界来重建信任，为当代企业信任修复提供历史教训。
This article uses the organisational trust repair model developed by Gillespie and Dietz to examine how the Royal Bank of Liverpool, which suspended payments during the commercial crisis in 1847, escaped liquidation and resumed business. This case study uses newspaper reports and selected corporate records to explore the narratives of trust between bank management and different interest groups over the course of resuscitating the establishment. There are three important aspects which shaped the dynamics of trust repair in this case: (1) the bank’s appeal to its reputational past in the community to reassert its credibility; (2) the management’s tactful reconciliation of competing expectations from different parties, and (3) the renegotiation of boundaries between directors’ power and stakeholders’ rights. By exploring the professional standpoint, local attributes and moral discourses within which the bank was resuscitated, this article evaluates the firm’s strategies for rebuilding trust and its corporate legitimacy through a contemporary theoretical perspective, thus offering lessons for corporate trust repair in the twenty-first century.