Nicole Gillespie

Nicole Gillespie is the KPMG Chair in Organizational Trust and Professor of Management at the University of Queensland Business School, and an International Research Fellow at the Centre for Corporate Reputation, Oxford University. She co-leads the Trust, Ethics and Governance Alliance at the University of Queensland.

Nicole joined UQ Business School in January 2010. Prior to this she held faculty and research positions at Melbourne Business School, Warwick Business School (UK), The Australian & New Zealand School of Government, The University of Melbourne, University of Queensland, and Swinburne University of Technology.

Trained as an organizational psychologist, Nicole's research focuses on trust development and repair in organisational contexts, and in contexts where trust is challenged (e.g. after a trust failure, in complex stakeholder environments, during organizational transformation and digital disruption, in emerging technologies and virtual healthcare, in cross-cultural relations). Current research projects focus on understanding stakeholder trust in organizations and industries, organizational trust repair, designing trustworthy organizations, trust in Artificial Intelligence and emerging technologies, and stakeholder trust and uptake of telemedicine. Her research appears in leading international journals, including the Academy of Management Review, Journal of Management, Journal of Applied Psychology, Organization Studies, Accounting Organizations and Society, European Journal of Information Systems, Journal of Services Research, Business Ethics Quarterly, Journal of Business Ethics, Human Resource Management, Sloan Management Review and Work and Stress, as well as in books and book chapters. She has also published in a range of health journals including Lancet Digital Health, Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare, Digital Health, and Dermatology. Her work has been extensively presented in Europe, the USA and Australia. She is Deputy Editor of the Journal of Trust Research and on the editorial board of the leading leadership journal, Leadership Quarterly.

Nicole has written commissioned research reports and case studies on building and repairing stakeholder trust for the UK Institute of Business Ethics, the World Economic Forum, and a policy note for the UK Parliament on restoring trust in the financial sector after the global financial crisis. Her most recent reports in collaboration with KPMG are Trustworthy by Design: A practical guide to organisational trust ; Trust in Artificial Intelligence: Australian Insights 2020 ; and Achieving Trustworthy AI: A model for trustworthy artificial intelligence. Her research and consulting has led to positive changes in industry, government and policy across a range of sectors, including Health, Resources, Finance and Banking, Higher Education, R&D, Not-for-Profit and the Defence industry. Clients include KPMG, the World Economic Forum, the Ontario Hospital Association, Barclays Bank, UBS Bank, Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital, the Royal Flying Doctor Service, CSIRO, The Australian Army, Bank of Queensland, Santos, Origin Energy and various government agencies. She has attracted over $7million in research funding as a Chief Investigator with her colleagues, including ARC, NHMRC and industry grants. Nicole is an active member of the Academy of Management, the European Group of Organisational Studies, and the First International Network on Trust and sits on multiple Advisory Boards.

Nicole has over twenty years experience in designing and delivering MBA, Executive MBA, specialist masters and undergraduate courses. She is the recipient of five teaching excellence awards and, together with former PhD student Mattia Anesa, two best paper awards from the Academy of Management. She is the recipient of the 2016 UQ Business School Research Award. In 2019 she was made a Fellow of the Australian and New Zealand School of Government in recognition of outstanding contribution to public management.