Paper info

HOW DOES TRUST MATTER IN BUSINESS RELATIONSHIPS?

Grzegorz Leszczynski , Antonella La Rocca , Ivan Snehota and Marek Zieli?ski

The paper was published at the 32nd IMP-conference in Poznan, Poland in 2016.

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Notwithstanding the differences in the conception of trust, numerous studies indicate that trust matters in development of inter-organizational customer supplier relationships. Yet, it is rare to find empirical studies that explore how (and why) mutual perceptions of trust matter in business relationships. The aim of this paper is to investigate how perceptions and judgments of trust relate to behaviors of actors in customer supplier relationships. Taking a relational perspective we unpack the concept of trust and investigate how trust links to interaction behaviors in customer supplier relationships. In this paper we explore the perceptions of trust and the interplay of trust perceptions at organizational and interpersonal level using multiple methods to collect empirical data. Our study evidences considerable heterogeneity in trust perceptions in business relationships. Findings of our study suggest that in relational context, perceptions, judgments and reactions to trust, and lack of it, are role-related and situation dependent and that trust is antecedent to as well as it is outcome of interaction behaviors. Our findings, if confirmed, have some implications for ‘managing maintenance of trust’ in business relationships, which we also discuss.