Temporal dynamics of trust in ongoing inter-organizational relationships
Author
Ekici, A.
Date
2013-08Source Title
Industrial Marketing Management
Print ISSN
0019-8501
Publisher
Elsevier
Volume
42
Issue
6
Pages
932 - 949
Language
English
Type
ArticleItem Usage Stats
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Show full item recordAbstract
This paper reports the results of a qualitative study undertaken to understand the nature of trust and its consequences
for both suppliers and buyers in short term (relatively new) and long term (older/more mature)
relationships in inter-organizational contexts. Scholars have recently pointed out the importance of research
that investigates the temporal characteristics and dynamics of trust in inter-organizational studies. Our paper
responds to this call by indentifying the changing nature of the level of trust as the buyer–supplier relationship
matures. Our findings contribute to sparse and conflicting previous research on the relationship between
length of partnership and perceptions of trust, types of dark side consequences of trusting relationships, and
reasons buyers and suppliers continue or terminate low/no-trust associations. Specifically, we illustrate that
buyers and suppliers draw on substantially different metaphors for understanding the nature of trust in long
and short term exchange relationships. Suppliers see marked differences in trust with long term versus short
term exchange partners, while buyers see little or no difference. Suppliers and buyers also appear to have different
conceptions of how trust is nested (or not) within the broader economic and/or personal relationship.
Through our inductive model, we elaborate several types of betrayal and disappointment, distinguish several
factors that lead suppliers and buyers to stay in relationships with partners they don't trust, and identify key
issues that topple untrusting relationships into terminated relationships.