Faculty and Research Faculty Nicole Gillespie

Nicole Gillespie

Chair of Trust and Professor of Management

Nicole Gillespie is an internationally recognised scholar on trust in organisations.

She holds the Chair in Trust and is Professor of Management at Melbourne Business School and the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Melbourne. Nicole is also an International Research Fellow at the Centre for Reputation at Oxford University, Honorary Professor at the University of Queensland, and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and the Australian and New Zealand School of Government. Prior to joining the University of Melbourne, Nicole was on faculty at the University of Queensland where she co-led the Trust, Ethics and Governance Alliance and highly impactful research partnerships with industry. She also previously held faculty positions at Warwick Business School (UK) and Swinburne University of Technology and served on the National AI Centre Thinktank on Responsible AI.

Trained as an organisational psychologist, Nicole's research focuses on trust development and repair, particularly in contexts where trust is challenged (e.g. after a trust failure, in complex stakeholder environments, during digital disruption, and in cross-cultural relations). Current projects focus on trust in artificial intelligence and the responsible adoption and governance of AI, stakeholder trust and evaluations of organisations, organisational trust repair, and leading trustworthy organisations. Her research appears in leading journals including Academy of Management Review, Journal of Management, Journal of Applied Psychology, Organization Studies, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of International Business Studies, Accounting Organizations and Society, European Journal of Information Systems and Lancet Digital Health.

Nicole has a strong track record of leading collaborative, industry engaged research, attracting competitive government (ARC, NMHRC) and industry funding of over $12 million with collaborators. She has written commissioned research reports for the UK Institute of Business Ethics, the World Economic Forum, the Canadian Institute of Company Directors and a policy note for the UK Parliament on restoring trust in the financial sector, and collaborated with KPMG to produce thought leadership and research reports on Trust in Artificial Intelligence: A global study; Trust in AI: Country Insights, Achieving Trustworthy AI, and Trustworthy by Design: A practical guide to organisational trust . She is the recipient of multiple research and teaching awards and serves on the editorial board of Leadership Quarterly and the Journal of Trust Research.

Most Notable Research:

Bitektine, A., Gillespie, N., & Lange, D. (forthcoming). From the Evaluator’s Perspective: A Functional Approach to Social Evaluations. Academy of Management Review.

Gillespie, N., Anesa, M., Lizzio-Wilson, M, Chapman, C., Healy, K., & Hornsey, M. (2024) How do sector level factors influence trust violations in not-for-profit organizations: A multilevel model. Journal of Business Ethics, 191, 373-398.

Gillespie, N., Lockey, S., Curtis, C., Pool, J. & Akbari, A. (2023). Trust in Artificial Intelligence: A Global Study. The University of Queensland and KPMG Australia.

Bingley, W., Curtis, C., Lockey, S., Bialkowski, A., Gillespie, N., et al. (2023). Where is the Human in Human-centered AI? Insights from Developer Priorities and User Experiences. Computers in Human Behavior, 141 107617.

Bueechl, J., Pudelko, M., & Gillespie, N. (2023). Chinese Subordinates Trust in German Supervisors: A Model of Inter-Cultural Trust Development. Journal of International Business, 54, 768-796.

Anesa, M., Spee, A.P., Gillespie, N. and Petani, F.J. (2022) Reassessing Moral Legitimacy in Times of Instability. Journal of Management Studies, 61(3), 857-887.

de Jong, B., Gillespie, N., Williamson, I., & Gill, C. (2021). Trust Consensus Within Culturally Diverse Teams: A Multi study Investigation. Journal of Management, 47(8), 2135–2168.

Gustafsson, S., Gillespie, N., Searle, R., Hope-Hailey, V. & Dietz, G. (2021). Preserving Organizational Trust During Disruption. Organization Studies, 42 (9), 1409-1433.

Rinta-Kahila, T., Someh, I., Gillespie, N., Gregor, S., & Indulska, M. (2021). Algorithmic Decision Making and System Destructiveness: A Case of Automatic Debt Recovery. The European Journal of Information Systems, 31(3), 313-338.

Hornsey, M., Mangan, H., Chapman, C.M., La Macchia, S., & Gillespie, N. (2021). The moral disillusionment model of organizational transgressions: Ethical transgressions trigger more negative reactions from consumers when committed by nonprofits. Journal of Business Ethics, 172, 653–671.

Lockey, S., Gillespie, N., Holm, D., & Someh, I. A. (2021). A Review of Trust in Artificial Intelligence: Challenges, Vulnerabilities and Future Directions. Proceedings of the 54th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (pp. 5463-5472). Top 1% most cited worldwide

Gillespie, N., Curtis, C., Bianchi, R., Akbari, A., and Fentener van Vlissingen, R. (2020). Achieving Trustworthy AI: A Model for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence. KPMG and The University of Queensland Report.

Anesa, M., Gillespie, N., Spee, P. & Sadiq, K. (2019). The legitimization of corporate tax minimization. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 75, 17-39.

De Jong, B., Dirks, K., & Gillespie, N. (2016). Trust and Team Performance: A Meta-Analysis of Main Effects, Moderators and Covariates. Journal of Applied Psychology, 101 (8), 1134-1150. Top 1% most cited worldwide

Green, T., Hartley, N. & Gillespie, N. (2016). Service Provider’s Experiences of Service Separation: The Case of Telehealth. Journal of Service Research, 19, 477-494.

Weibel, A., Den Hartog, D., Gillespie, N., Searle, R., Six, F. & Skinner, D. (2016). How do Controls Impact Employee Trust in the Employer? Human Resource Management, 55 (3), 437-462.

Bachmann, R., Gillespie, N. & Priem, R. (2015). Repairing Trust in Organizations and Institutions: Toward a Conceptual Framework. Organization Studies, 36 (9), 1123-1142.

Gillespie, N., Dietz, G. & Lockey, S. (2014) Organizational Reintegration and Trust Repair after an Integrity Violation: A Case Study. Business Ethics Quarterly, 24 (3), 371-410.

Hurley, R., Gillespie, N., Ferrin, D. & Dietz, G. (2013). Designing Trustworthy Organizations. MIT Sloan Management Review, 54 (4), 75- 82.

Gillespie, N. & Dietz, G. (2009). Trust repair after an organization-level failure. Academy of Management Review, 34 (1), 127-145.

Lewicki, R., Tomlinson, E. & Gillespie, N. (2006). Models of Interpersonal Trust Development: Theoretical Approaches, Empirical Evidence, and Future Directions. Journal of Management, 32 (6), 991-1022.