Trust and Collaboration in Interagency Information

This paper presents a model providing a feedback structure that clarifies the nature of the reinforcing processes involved in the development of trust through collaborating in a project. The feedback structure is grounded in data from a project where a prototype system was built, and it is consistent with the literature on trust, collaboration and diffusion of innovation. Four feedback processes are identified at the core of the development of trust and collaboration, two of them reinforcing in nature, and two of them counterbalancing in nature. Experiments with the model suggest that the initiation of a collaborative project with a new partner has the potential to have a slow start because of the lack of knowledge about the other parties. The initiation of the collaboration could be accelerated by shaping expectations of benefits of the project or by reducing the perception of risk associated with the project. Introduction The purpose of this paper is to describe a feedback-based collaboration theory. The paper extends previous theory development about trust and knowledge dynamics (Luna-Reyes et al. 2004), further exploring behaviors of the model of trust described previously in the literature, as well as its implications to the management of collaborations in the context of information technology innovations in the public sector. It is common to find in the collaboration literature textual descriptions describing the positive loop in Figure 1. The loop describes how a group’s willingness to collaborate depends on how much they trust on each other. Then, collaboration leads to work done, and one of the results of getting results is the development or confirmation of trust on the group. The present paper extends and explores these relations between trust and the engagement of participants in doing work in a project. 1 The research reported here is supported by National Science Foundation grant #SES-9979839. The views and conclusions expressed in this paper are those of the authors alone and do not reflect the views or policies of the National Science Foundation.