Dr Graham Dietz, BA, MSc, PhD
Contact (email at graham.dietz@durham.ac.uk)
Biography
Graham completed his PhD at the London School of Economics in 2002. The research comprised four detailed, qualitative case studies on the development of trust in 'workplace partnership' arrangements in the UK. An article summarising the findings has been published in the Human Resource Management Journal (14:1, 2004).
After his PhD, he worked as a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands before arriving at Durham Business School in January 2005.
Graham has previously taught on industrial relations and HRM courses at the London School of Economics and South Bank University in the UK, and at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
His research interests revolve around the nature of trust in the employment relationship. For this research trust is viewed as a three-stage process involving, firstly, a belief in the other party's likely trustworthiness, followed by a willingness to render oneself vulnerable to that party and, finally, engaging in risk-taking behaviour in interactions with that party. Key research areas include therefore how trust is established, nurtured and enhanced, but also how it can be damaged and even destroyed, and then repaired again. Other angles include differences in trust levels according to the organisational relationship concerned (i.e. between an employee and her/his immediate line manager, versus that between the employee and her/his employer's senior management), and the impact of management practice on employees' trust levels. This is a particularly critical research area, especially whether different 'bundles' of HR strategies and practices are more successful at developing workplace trust than others. A further vital research agenda is to investigate the role of trust in the so-called 'black box' between an organisation's HRM system and its overall performance effectiveness and employees' well-being: is trust the decisive quality which moderates the impact of HRM on performance?
Research Interests
- Trust in the employment relationship
Selected Publications
Journal papers: academic
- Gillespie, N. & Dietz, G. 2009. Trust repair after organization-level failure. Academy of Management Review 34(1): 127-145. (Additional information) (View publication online)
- Dietz, G., van der Wiele, T., van Iwaarden, J. & Brosseau, J. 2006. HRM inside UK e-commerce firms innovations in the ‘new’ economy and continuities with the ‘old’. International Small Business Journal 24(5): 443-470. (Additional information) (View publication online)
- Dietz, G. & Hartog, D. 2006. Measuring trust inside organisations. Personnel Review 35(5): 557-588. (Additional information) (View publication online)
- Dietz, G., Cullen, J. & Coad, A. 2005. Can there be non-union forms of partnership? Employee Relations 27(3): 289-306. (Additional information) (View publication online)
- Boselie, J. P., Dietz, G. & Boon, C. 2005. Commonalities and contradictions in HRM and performance research. Human Resource Management Journal 15(3): 67-94. (Additional information) (View publication online)
- Dietz, G. 2004. Partnership and the development of trust in British workplaces. Human Resource Management Journal 14(1): 5-24. (Additional information) (View publication online)
