Measuring trust in supply chain partners’ relationships

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a context dependent, multi perspective multilevel trust measurement instrument to measure supply chain members’ trust. Design/methodology/approach – Since trust is a context dependent phenomenon and the level of trust between partners cannot be measured easily, a conceptual framework is developed to measure supply chain partners’ trust from risk perspective (i.e. risk related to characteristics, rational and institutions/security) considering the relationship as ‘‘Risky’’, ‘‘Risk-worthy’’ and ‘‘Not risky’’ and translated them in terms of trust perspectives as ‘‘No trust’’, ‘‘Trust worthy’’ and ‘‘Trust’’. Findings – Although the research on trust emphasizes to focus on a member’s characteristics such as benevolence, integrity, ability, reliability, credibility, etc, decision to trust require multiple judgments therefore trust should be measured from various context dependent perspectives at multiple levels in relationship from trustor’s perceptions and calculations. The key perspectives of trust in supply chain relationship are; characteristics trust, rational trust (cost and benefit, dynamic capabilities, technology) and institutional trust/security system. An important argument of this concept is that trust can only be dyadic. Research limitations/implications – Researchers on trust have repeatedly confirmed that trust is a multifaceted and context dependent concept. However the business context may not remain the same in the dynamic business environment, therefore this conceptual framework can be used as generalized trust measurement tool. Practical implications – This paper has attempted to develop a simple and practical multi level trust measurement tool for the complex multi-dimensional construct of supply chain partners’ relationship trust. Originality/value – This study may be one of the first to develop a multi level trust measurement concept from risk perspectives.