Not surprisingly, trust in private business deteriorated during the Great Recession. “The financial meltdown caused public distrust toward the private sector and increased trust in nonprofits, academic institutions and government,” Professor Kim Elsbach told an audience during a panel discussion in Sacramento in March to frame the release of the “2010 Edelman Golden State Trust Barometer.” The event was hosted by the global public relations firm Edelman, whose annual surveys provide a snapshot of public sentiment.

Assistant Professor Gina Dokko, who joined the School’s faculty in July, spent the summer presenting her latest research in the U.S. and Europe, traveling to the 25th EGOS Colloquium in Barcelona, Spain, and the Academy of Management conference in August in Chicago.

This past summer Professor Donald Palmer presented his research on organizational wrongdoing in a talk titled “Power Corrupts, But How?: An Analysis of Enron’s Illegal Special Purpose Entities” at Cornell University’s Johnson School and at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

Using Enron as a case study, Palmer argued that corporate malfeasance occurs within a specific organizational context where wrongdoers are enabled to build both formal and informal power relations that allow them to obtain cooperation and overcome resistance from other organizational participants. Palmer concludes that solving ethical failures in organizations involves more than firing the offender.

As President-elect Obama shapes his ideas and package to stimulate the economy, Dean Nicole Woolsey Biggart traveled to Washington D.C. in December to participate in a high-level, day-long conference titled “How Will the Obama Administration and New Congress Support Innovation amid an Economic Crisis?”

Sponsored by the University of California Davis, the Economic Policy Institute, and the Information Technology and Innovation Institute, the December 1 forum featured leaders from industry and academia exploring the role of the federal government in investing in innovation policies that promote jobs, new technologies and advances in such things as energy independence and sustainability.

Much has been said and written about the perceived increasing “irrelevance” of organizational studies. Concerns about the field’s relevance were a motivating factor for the formation of the journal Organization Science in 1990. Just last year, the Academy of Management Journal published a series of articles that addressed the topic in commemoration of the journal’s 50th anniversary. But there has been very little systematic research on this subject—until now.

Professor Kimberly Elsbach was among a select group of UC Davis faculty and lecturers honored at a campus authors event on April 29. Elsbach was invited to discuss her book Organizational Perception Management, which summarizes the research findings from a relatively new domain of the same name.

Work space design can make or break a company’s productivity, either inspiring innovation and collaboration or stifling employees’ ability to work smarter. Thirty years ago conventional wisdom held that to create an environment that promoted efficiency and comfort, work spaces needed to be neat and tidy with no personal items cluttering desktops.

Recognized for her expertise in organizational behavior and research on identity and work, Associate Professor Beth Bechky helped organize a two-day forum on future jobs skills at the Keck Center in Washington D.C. from May 31 to June 1.

Getting the most from employees might involve more than a motivational speech from management—think design.

In their recent article, “It’s More Than a Desk: Working Smarter Through Leveraged Office Design,” published in the winter issue of the California Management Review, Professor Kimberly Elsbach and Assistant Professor Beth Bechky lay out systematic ways managers can design office space to inspire group membership, improve collaboration and encourage group problem solving among their employees.