Professor of Accounting and Control, the Mubadala-chaired Professor in Corporate Governance and Strategy, INSEAD Business School, Gilles Hilary, commented on his ongoing research with SMU Assistant Professor of Accounting Sterling Huang. Their research suggests that organisations in parts of the US where trust among people is higher rely less on explicit contracts and offer less powerful share-based incentives. Companies in these regions manipulate reporting to a lower degree, engage in less empire building through bad mergers and acquisition and perform better overall. These results suggest that optimal results are achieved by having an approach based on setting the broad principles, trusting the executives to apply them and (intelligently) verifying ex post that they have been applied.